Place:Fyfield, Wiltshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Fyfield is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire, in the Kennet Valley about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of the town of Marlborough. The village is on the A4 road which was historically the main route from London to the west of England.

Fyfield downland has many sarsen stones – pieces of dense, hard, sandy rock. In prehistoric times these were used for monuments, handaxes, quern-stones and other implements; medieval houses in Kennet Valley villages had walls made from sarsen blocks. Around 1850, Edward Free began a stone-cutting business at Fyfield which supplied much material for buildings, pavements and kerbs. The Free family moved to Marlborough in 1890; sarsen cutting declined after 1915 and ceased in 1939.

Prior to the mid 19th century, the village was centred south of the church, in the valley northeast of Lockeridge House (c. 1740). After a fire, this area was abandoned in favour of higher ground along the Bath Road; many of the new cottages were demolished during road improvements in the 1930s, leaving the village without a heart.

Governance

The parish elects a joint parish council with the adjacent parish of West Overton; the council is named "Fyfield and West Overton". It falls within the area of the Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for all significant local government functions.

Before the 19th century, Fyfield was a chapelry of Overton ecclesiastical parish, alongside the tythings of East Overton,Lockeridge, Shaw, and West Overton. The tithings became a poor law parish called West Overton while Fyfield relieved its own poor; this probably led the census enumerators of 1841 to class Fyfield, with its medieval chapel, incorrectly as an ancient parish, which in turn led to its establishment as a civil parish.

Clatford Park and Overton Heath, to the south of the ancient Wansdyke and in the far south of the modern parish, were extra-parochial places in the earlier 19th century. In 1896 they were merged into Fyfield parish.

Research Tips

• Victoria County History - Wiltshire - Vol 11, pp181-203 - Parish: Overton. British History Online. University of London.
• The introductory chapter on Elstub and Everleigh Hundred includes a map illustrating the tythings within the various parishes of the hundred. Some of these eventually became parishes and are listed separately within WeRelate.
• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.