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History
The small town of Tisbury lies approximately 13 miles (21 km)
west of Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire.
With a population at the 2001 census of 2,056 it is an important local
centre for communities around the Nadder Valley & Vale
of Wardour. It is the largest settlement within the Cranborne Chase and
West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (larger towns
such as Salisbury and Shaftesbury are just outside the area).
This town has a little historical significance. There is evidence
of Bronze Age settlement and traces of a probable henge monument with
some evidence of settlement 3-4000 years ago. To the southeast of the
town there is a quite large hill fort, known as Castle Ditches.The
first written evidence of settlement was in Saxon (400-1066 A.D)
times as a fortress site ( burgh/bury being a fortified town ) to
defend the area against the Danes who were slowly encroaching from the
east and north. There was a large important monastery in the village
but this was possible destroyed by the Vikings but the name remained as
Tisbury-Minster until Medieval times
The Saxon settlement came into the possession of Shaftesbury Abbey
across the border into Dorset, founded by the daughter of
Alfred the Great Æthelgifu. The administration centre was the
monastic grange, still called Abbey Grange Place Farm. Its 15th-century
thatched tithe barn bears the largest thatched roof in England. The old
Wardour Castle lies approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) to the southwest
of Tisbury. New Wardour Castle is a private residence
The village's 13th-century prosperity came from the chalk quarries that
produced stone for the building of Salisbury Cathedral, and from the
wool that supported a local cloth industry with the mfulling mill at
the end of Fonthill lake. The village suffered a serious setback with
the Black Death in the mid-14th century but recovered.
The churchyard of the parish church of St John's holds the graves of
Rudyard Kipling's parents who lived at Arundell house then the
vicarage. It also holds the second oldest tree in Great Britain, a
large yew tree, which is believed to be around 4,000 years old.
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