Early history

The area has had human habitation since the Iron Age; a settlement is marked on Ordnance Survey maps underneath several modern houses in Harnwood Road/Old Blandford Road, a straight Roman Road.^{[n 1][2]}

Middle Ages

Until the 19th century formation of urban and rural districts, the area lay within the Cawdon and Cawsworth Hundred of Wiltshire.^[3]

Road access to the city was improved in 1244 by the building of Ayleswade bridge, in two sections across an island in the Avon, leading traffic from the south through Harnham instead of the older route to the west through Wilton.^[4] The old bridge survives inside an outer casing added in the 16th or 17th century.^[5]

St Nicholas Hospital, sometimes described as being in Harnham,^[6] was built earlier than the bridge, just north of it.^[7][8] Parts of the medieval almshouses survive, including two chapels,^[9] and the site continues to provide sheltered housing for a Christian community.^[10]

The manors of East and West Harnham were still owned by the 13th-century College of the Valley Scholars, which stood next to St Nicholas Hospital, when it was dissolved in 1542. The next year, they were sold by the Crown to Sir Michael Lister, a king's servant.^[11]

Post Industrial Revolution

In 1848, Samuel Lewis (publisher) described the settlement in a topographical dictionary based partly on 1841 census statistics:

• East Harnham, a tything, in the parish of Britford, union of Alderbury, hundred of Cawden and Cadworth, Salisbury and Amesbury, and south divisions of Wilts., 1½ mile (S. E. by S.) from the city of Salisbury; containing 411 inhabitants.
• West Harnham (St George) a parish, in the union of Alderbury, hundred of Cawden and Cadworth, Salisbury and Amesbury, and S. divisions of Wilts, 1½ mile (S. W. by W.) from Salisbury; containing 256 inhabitants. The living is annexed to the vicarage of Coombe-Bisset; the tithes were partly commuted for land and money payments under an Inclosure Act in 1783; and the remainder have been commuted for a rentcharge of £50.^[12]

Civil parishes

East Harnham spent less than ten years as a civil parish. Anciently a tything of Britford, a new ecclesiastical parish was created in 1855 after the opening of All Saints church.^[13] East Harnham continued to be part of Britford civil parish until 1896, when it was made a separate civil parish. In 1904, when Salisbury became a single civil parish, East Harnham was abolished and its area transferred to West Harnham, Salisbury and Britford.^[4][14]

The ancient parish of West Harnham was separated from Netherhampton to its west by the course of a Roman road.^[15] West Harnham civil parish was established in 1904, gaining part of East Harnham. In 1927 its urban part was transferred to Salisbury, and in 1934 the remainder was transferred to Netherhampton.^[16]

East Harnham

East Harnham is centred on a busy roundabout and is 0.8 miles south-south west of Salisbury city centre.^[20] The roundabout is one end of the A3094 to Quidhampton and is also the intersection of the A338 and the A354. Attractions in the area include Salisbury Lawn Tennis Club, Bishop Wordsworth's school playing fields and the River Avon which separates it from the rest of Salisbury. The suburb is near the Britford park and ride site, where regular Salisbury Reds bus services connect the area to the city centre.

West Harnham

West Harnham is an outer suburb of Salisbury, bisected by the A3054/Netherhampton Road, and is north west of Old Blandford Road.^[21] The suburb is home to the Harnham trading estate as well as the local water meadows. West Harnham was incorporated into the city after East Harnham, being further from the city centre.

Church of England

In 1881 the long-standing church at West Harnham – previously a chapelry of Coombe Bissett, two miles to the south – was united with the newer church at East Harnham.^[27] Since 1972, the name of the parish is 'St. George and All Saints Harnham'^[28][29] and both churches are part of the same Christian community.^[30]

St George

St George's Church, West Harnham

It is certain that the West Harnham church was built or re-built by 1115, the date when King Henry I signed a charter granting certain churches to Salisbury Cathedral, including the church at Harnham.^[31] A mid-12th-century door survives in the north wall of the nave; the font bowl is also from that century.^[32] The chancel was lengthened in the "E.E. style" (i.e. during the 13th century), and probably in the early 14th century the Trinity Chapel on the south side was built.^[31]

St George's had some remodelling c1300, and 1300–30 is the indicated date of the south chapel; its tower mostly early 19th century, probably on the site of an earlier tower. William Butterfield led its careful restoration (1873–4). He was responsible in the 1850s for the great church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London which broke new ground in its use of brick and of extensive polychromy detailing. The church was designated as Grade II* listed in 1952.^[31]

All Saints

All Saints Church, East Harnham

T.H. Wyatt designed the small All Saints church at East Harnham, completed in 1854.^[33] The work was paid for by Isabella Lear, widow of Francis Lear, in memory of her husband who had been Dean of Salisbury.^[34] Previously part of Britford parish, a new parish was created for All Saints in 1855.^[35]

Methodist

A small Methodist church was built in Saxon Road in 1952, closed in the 1980s and later demolished.^[36]

Ayleswade bridge

The 1244 bridge over the Avon is Grade I listed.^[5]

Mill House and Old Mill

part of the Old Mill Hotel

Dating from the 12th century, this Grade I listed building^[37] in the lower part of West Harnham has details around its doors and windows from 1250. The building was converted in the 16th century from ecclesiastical use to Wiltshire's first paper mill, when the River Nadder was diverted to flow under it.

In the early twentieth century, the property was converted into a country club by Mary Fox-Pitt, daughter-in-law of Augustus Pitt Rivers. The atmosphere was praised by the food writer Florence White, author of Good Things in England (1932). She quotes the artist Augustus John saying "It is the best cookery in England."^[38]

The building is now a hotel and the mill race can still be seen from its restaurant.

Rose and Crown Terrace

Rose and Crown Terrace is the largest of the listed buildings in East Harnham; nos 53-61 are listed and all but one have thatched roofs; the style is formal early 19th century Regency.^[39]

Notes

References