Boyton, Wiltshire

Prehistoric sites in the parish include Corton Long Barrow.[2] The 1086 Domesday Book recorded 17 households at Boyton[3] and six at Corton.[4]

In the thirteenth century, there was a castle in the village. An occupant of the castle was Hugh Giffard and his wife Sibyl, who was the daughter and co-heiress of Walter de Cormeilles. Hugh was father of the Walter Giffard who became Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England. Another son was Godfrey Giffard, Bishop of Worcester and himself also Chancellor of England.

Cortington Manor, near Corton on the Boyton road, dates from the late 17th century.[5]

The 1841 census recorded a population of 305 at Corton and 55 at Boyton;[6] after peaking at 410 in 1860, the population of the parish declined considerably.[1]

The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) described Boyton as follows:

BOYTON, a parish in the hundred of Heytesbury, in the county of Wilts, 3 miles to the S.E. of Heytesbury, its post town, and 7 from Warminster. The Salisbury branch of the Great Western Railway passes near it. The parish is situated on the south side of the river Wylye, a branch of the Nadder, and contains the hamlet of Corton. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Salisbury, of the value of £549, in the patronage of the President and Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford. The church, which is dedicated to St Mary, is a good specimen of early English architecture, and has been recently restored. It was erected in 1301, and contains a fine circular window and an ancient font. There are some small charitable endowments. Boyton House, the old seat of the Lamberts, was built in 1618. CORTON, (or Cortington), a township in the parish of Boyton, hundred of Heytesbury, in the county of Wilts, 1 mile S. of Heytesbury, and 1 N.W. of Boyton. It belongs to the Lambert family.[7]

The Salisbury branch line was built through the Wylye valley, opening in 1856. Codford station was a short distance north of Boyton village; it closed to passengers in 1955 when local services were withdrawn, although the line continues in use as part of the Wessex Main Line.

St Mary's Church

The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin has 12th-century origins but is mainly from the 13th and 14th centuries, with major restoration by T.H. Wyatt in 1860.[8] The south chapel was founded circa 1280 by the Giffard family and has a large circular west window; it houses Giffard effigies and memorials. The church is Grade I listed.[9]

Corton had a chapel of ease from the 13th to 16th centuries but its exact site is not known.[10] Around 1877 a church named All Saints was built, although it was not consecrated until 1937 as ownership of the site was uncertain. At the consecration service the church was dedicated to 'The Holy Angels'. The church was declared redundant in 1980 and was later sold for residential use.[11][12]

A baptist chapel was built at Corton in 1828, and enlarged in 1854 and 1914. It closed in 1965 and is now a private house.[13]

A country house was built next to the church in 1618 for Thomas Lambert, a landowner who later served briefly in parliament. Pevsner describes it as "a fine square house, three by three gables".[14] Ownership continued in the Lambert family until 1935.[15]

From 1876 to 1882, the house was let to Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria.[16] When he married, he moved his establishment to Claremont, a house in Surrey, but he is commemorated locally in the name of the Prince Leopold Inn in the neighbouring village of Upton Lovell.

In the 1950s the house was bought by Henry Pelham-Clinton-Hope, 9th Duke of Newcastle, and became the family seat, his house at Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire, having been demolished in 1938 and the estate sold in 1946.

Boyton Manor was designated as Grade I listed in 1968.[17]

The house and most of the estate were sold to the Countess de Brye after the Duke’s divorce from his second wife, Diana, Duchess of Newcastle, and she continued to live nearby at Cortington Manor until her death in 1997.[18]

Local government services are provided by Wiltshire Council, based in Trowbridge some fifteen miles to the north. Boyton (with Corton) has its own elected parish council of five members.

The village is represented in Parliament by the MP for South West Wiltshire, Andrew Murrison, and its representative in Wiltshire Council is Christopher Newbury.

There is no school in the parish; the nearest primary school is at Codford. A National School was built in 1874 and closed in 1932.[19]

There is a pub at Corton, the Dove Inn.

The Herbert Baronetcy, of Boyton, was created in 1936 for Sir Sidney Herbert, a politician. It became extinct on his death in 1939.

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