Gastard

Gastard is a village in Wiltshire, England, four miles south west of Chippenham, part of the civil parish of the nearby town of Corsham.

Gastard

Gastard post office
Gastard
Location within Wiltshire
Population435 
OS grid referenceST8868
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townCorsham
Postcode districtSN13
Dialling code01249
PoliceWiltshire
FireDorset and Wiltshire
AmbulanceSouth Western
UK Parliament

The village has a pub called the Harp and Crown.[1]

History and church
Parish church of St John the Baptist

Remains of an early field system at Gastard are believed to date from the Romano-British period,[2] and Roman jewellery has been found.[3]

The name of the village has had several different forms over the centuries and was recorded variously as Gatesterta in 1154, Getestert in 1167, Gateherst in 1177, Gastard in 1428.[4] In 1875 it was referred to in a directory as "Gastard (or Gustard)".[5]

Gastard Court is a medieval manor house with 17th-century mullioned windows and buttresses.[6][7]

Bath Freestone was mined at the Monk Quarry on Monk Lane, Gastard, where Forest Marble can also be seen exposed.[8]

For Church of England purposes, Gastard is an ecclesiastical parish and has its own parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist, although now part of the united benefice of Greater Corsham and Lacock.[9] The church, which dates from 1912,[7] still has a morning service every Sunday.[1]

In 1967, the village experienced a freak hailstorm, with some of the hailstones of nearly three inches in diameter.[10]

The "Harp and Crown" public house in June 2006

Governance

Most significant local government functions are carried out by the Wiltshire Council unitary authority; until April 2009, Gastard was part of the district of North Wiltshire. At the parliamentary level, the village is part of the Chippenham borough constituency.

Notable people

See also

References
  1. Gastard Church at corshamandlacockchurches.org.uk
  2. Simon Draper, Landscape, settlement and society in Roman and early medieval Wiltshire (2006), p. 94
  3. D. F. Mackreth , 'Roman brooches from Gastard, Corsham, Wiltshire', in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine vol. 85 (1992), pp. 51-62
  4. Richard Tomkins, Wiltshire Place Names (1983), p. 54
  5. Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire (1875), p. 116
  6. Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford, Archaeology in the field (1954), p. 72
  7. Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Wiltshire (1951), p. 176
  8. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (1959), p. 278
  9. Chippenham Deanery Archived 11 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine at anglican.org
  10. Weather (Royal Meteorological Society, Great Britain, 1968), p. 406
  11. Mary Bateson, Mediaeval England: English feudal society from the Norman conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century (1904), p. 175
  12. Edmund Lodge, The peerage and baronetage of the British empire as at present existing (1890 edition), p. 785
Bibliography
  • Bob Hayward, Where the Ladbrook flows: memories of village boyhood in Gastard, Wiltshire (1983, ISBN 978-0-9508625-2-1)

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