Bird HengeTrail Stage No 10 to Park Lane Heytesbury

460 yards. From Bird Henge continue along path leaving a wood of fir trees on right. After 220 yards you will come to some steps which lead down to a path to the left starting alongside the A36. Continue towards the bollards.  On the left is  a milestone erected in 1840 when a Turnpike Act consolidated roads leading from Warminster..The decaying tarmac was the A36 until the bypass was built.  You will come to Park Lane going left and Park Street going straight ahead. A diversion of 100 yards along Park Street will bring you to these gates. 

Rather strange to have these grand early nineteenth century gates leading to a modern garage.They were the gates that led through the park  to Heytesbury House. The coat of arms are those of the Barons Heytesbury. William Ashe  a Court was made a Baron on becoming British Ambassador to Saint Petersburg in 1828. In 1883 the  Lord Heytesbury of the day had 7025 acres in Wiltshire, 4805 in the Isle of Wight and 13303 in County Wicklow. Nearly all  Heytesbury belonged to Heytesbury. In World War 1 the House was requisitioned for use by army officers, among them Dennis Wheatley, the thriller writer whose mess bill at Heytesbury House survives in the Imperial War Museum.

Siegfried Sassoon, the war poet,  bought the house and park in 1933 and lived there until his death in 1967. He entertained well known friends such as Lawrence of Arabia. The new bypass divided the park in 1986. The Department of Transport paid for the gates below to be moved to the new drive north of the A36  to the house,then owned by George Sassoon , Siegfried's son. In 1993 West Wiltshire District Council  insisted on their return to the original site and, after threatened fines, got their way. The present house behind and to the right of these gates replaced  a much smaller lodge.

In the 1920's the Heytesbury estate was selling up most of its land.The notice below announced the sale of "about 55 cottages."

                                     
                                          Return to Park Lane and continue along it.

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 11 Park Lane to Heytesbury Mill

490 yards. Park Lane leads straight to Heytesbury Mill. On left you will see first  this building known as Everett's Yard  until recently renamed after upgrading.  It is marked in a map of 1832 as a Factory.This wan not a manufactory  where things were made but a factory in the older sense of a warehouse. It most likely stored textile work produced by home workers. The Everett family prospered by providing generations of stewards for the Heytesbury estate. They became successful textile manufacturers and ascended into the ranks of the landed gentry. They over reached themselves by paying for a very expensive new church with a spire built between  1866 and 1868
by a very expensive architect, John Loughborough Pearson,  in the neighbouring  Sutton Veny.

On the right of the lane is a  winter bourne usually dry even in winter. In February 2014 it lived up to                                         its name.living up to its name.

Above nineteenth century cottages with cob walls that is to say made of mud and straw.

         The house above was recently made by converting a one storey farm building.

Above Mill Farm, a farm until recently. It was a woolen mill in the 19th  century then a corn mill. After this corner turn left  along the track at the end of the cottages on the left

Bird Henge Trail Stage No12 Heytesbury Mill to Knook

780 yards  There is a patch in this stage which can be very muddy and after very heavy rain almost impassable.You may prefer, after seeing the first two items shown here below and above, to return to Knook the way you came and resume the walk at Stage 13.   Turn left down a track just after the cottages. ( You will see a plaque with No 131  on the wall ). Ahead of you to the left you will see the remains of an old sluice gate which still had, when this photo  above was taken, a rotten bit of wood at the top. These remains give an idea of the scale and sophistication of the irrigation scheme in place to flood the water meadows . The flat fields you now see were then more like a Dutch landscape with ditches. Nearby is a pile of masonry (see the image below) This may have been dumped by an errant lorry driver from miles away but they usually choose more remote locations for that.This is more likely to be some relic of the waterworks dumped in the nearest convenient spot.The curve suggests it being designed to take water.The importance of the irrigation of the meadows is reflected in a clause in a lease in 1821 from the landowner Sir William A Court to Mr William Flower for the mill that Sir William kept control of the hatches for drowning the meadows.

Turn right and then after a few yards go through a metal gate into the open field. At this point if there has been heavy rain it may be advisable to return as suggested above. If you continue with stage 12 as s you walk through the field you will get a good view of  Garstons below  in origin a fishing lodge for the summer built in a Tudor style. It was built on land with fishing rights on land bought from the Heytesbury Estate which sold a lot of land in the 1920's. Garstons is an old place name - Garston's Field appears on a map of 1774.. The house has perhaps a unique distinction of two connections with the Titanic through two separate families who have lived there. They both had relations on the doomed liner.  She  survived and he drowned.












The next image of trees is a spot,some 320 yards from the gate,     where you may be able if the vegetation is not too long to spot some masonry surviving from the irrigation scheme.

     
    Below are some substantial remains of the irrigation scheme a little further along.

Turn diagonally left at the next field aiming for the metal gate in the far left corner. You will arrive back at the River Wylye, Turn left for 20 yards to look at this concrete bridge (below)  which is survivor of one thrown across the Wylye by Allied troops preparing for D-day in 1944. They used what came to hand including it seems, old railway tracks probably left over from the temporary railways built in World War to service the army camps in the valley.There were two more similar bridges further down the Wylye one of  which has been replaced recently and the other removed. Beer barrels filled with concrete were used in one of them.

There are now two cottages here where there were once four by the river  in 1887 as shown on a map of that date.. The other two  were to the left of this - a reminder that the countryside has known periods of depopulation. Below the large and wide block of masonry under the bridge suggests that there may have been a sluice here once.An old photo suggests that the river immediately downstream had higher banks in the early twentieth century which would fit this hypothesis.  Cross the bridge Walk though Knook and turn right back towards Upton Lovell.

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Bird Henge Trail Stage No 13 Knook to Prince Leopold Inn Upton Lovell

 1200 yards last stage of walk.At Knook by the postbox cross roads turn right along lane which turns into a path and then a tarmac lane again.Continue in a straight lane to pub. Above and below East Farm where 290 cows are milked in a highly automated system.The last image shows Tom Pearce farming in Knook in 1920.