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Explore Monkton Farleigh
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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St Peter’s parish church has a 12th century Norman romanesque south door and a plain 13th century west tower with saddleback roof. The rest was rebuilt in 1844 by the London architect T.H. Wyatt (1807-1880). In the churchyard are graves of members of the Hobhouse family.
Click on the photographs for a larger version
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Near the church No. 82, Shell Cottage is a four-bay house that is dated 1736, but has a shell hood over the door in the fashion of around 1700.
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The old Post Office and village shop closed in 2014. The wing at right angles to it is called Cluny Cottage (No. 67) and was probably built in the 16th century, as demonstrated by its pointed gothic doorway. It functioned as the parish poorhouse before the Bradford Workhouse was set up in 1836.
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Monkton Farleigh Manor House is a large early Georgian building of seven bays with numerous later
alterations and additions. It incorporates fragments of the Cluniac Priory of St Mary that was founded here in 1120-30 and gives the name Monkton to the village.
The Manor faces across views that stretch to the Vale of Pewsey and Salisbury Plain. The Avenue was made across farmland for 2 km to take advantage of the position of the house and reaches South Wraxall, the next parish.
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The little building standing alone in a field north of the Manor House is the Monks’ Conduit. It was the water supply for the medieval priory and dates from the 14th century, although the stone roof was rebuilt in 1784.
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On the northern side of the village is the King’s Arms public house, briefly known as the Muddy Duck, because of ties to another of that name in Oxfordshire. It consists of a main building with a two-storey porch and a wing at right angles. The third side of the courtyard in front belongs to a building of the farmyard next door.
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At the crossroads in the centre of the village the fingerpost stands on a circular structure of two steps which may have been originally the base of the ancient cross that functioned as a butter cross or market cross where local people could sell their produce. It stood in the churchyard and could have been moved here when the church was rebuilt and used as the base for the village pump.
The other public house in Monkton Farleigh parish was the Fox and Hounds, in the outlying hamlet of Farleigh Wick, on the Bradford to Bath road. It called itself a “traditional 16c country pub”, but was only recorded from the middle of the 18th century. It closed suddenly just before Christmas 2017 and it seems unlikely that it will open again.
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The big house called Inwoods is located at the edge of woods to the south of Farleigh Wick. It was built as a hunting lodge as part of the estate that belonged to the Skrine family of nearby Warleigh in Bathford, Somerset and was extended in the 1890s-1900s. The farm near the house was formerly called Ridge Farm. Inwoods was separated from Warleigh in the 1920s and belonged to the Whitehead family since then. Following the death of Dr Denis S. Whitehead, the house and estate of 300 acres were offered for sale in 2015. The land was purchased by musician Dr Brian May, who has extended the woodland by new planting.
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