Biddestone green and pond

Biddestone green is the middle of Biddestone, a stone village of north-west Wiltshire about 6 km by road south of Castle Combe. It is a large open green with a duck pond made in 1661, ringed by houses that are mostly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the village around it is a conservation area.

History

The green has been the centre of the village since at least the seventeenth century. Biddestone was a Saxon village, recorded in Domesday Book with two manors and two churches, and it stayed a place of farmers, maltsters and craftsmen; the Wiltshire Community History records a sixteenth-century house on the green that was once worked as a cloth factory by Flemings.

The pond

In 1661, the record says, William Mountjoy, who had bought the manor estate in 1626, built a channel to bring water from the springs and the street into a pond. The heritage trail leaflet says he made it to improve his pasture and that the spring feeding it never runs dry. The pond watered animals and later steam engines, and in hot weather carters soaked their wagon wheels in it so the iron tyres would not work loose.

Life on the green

The green held the village's fairs, with swing boats and roundabouts, and its harvest festival. Biddestone was the only maker of Attwood's prize ploughs, built, the leaflet says, at a works in the garden of The Close until 1914, and about forty men still made farm implements here in the middle of the twentieth century. In 2014 the green played the village of Carsely in Sky's Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death.

What to see

Walk right round the green to see it properly. The things to look for are:

• the pond itself, and the wellhead and pump on Church Road;
• the White Horse, an eighteenth-century inn whose porch has a datestone of 1872 with the initials of T. H. A. Poynder of Hartham Park; vestry meetings were sometimes held there;
• the war memorial, a limestone cross more than 3m tall on a granite base, dedicated in 1920;
• The Close, set back behind its wall, an eighteenth-century house largely rebuilt from 1924 to 1929, and called by the leaflet a contender for the oldest house in the village;
• Willow House, three storeys with a formal front, dated 1730 and built for a maltster, Samuel Alborne in the leaflet;
• Elm Lodge, a Victorian house at the west end with 1878 on its porch, and the Baptist chapel of the nineteenth century.

Off the green, Chippenham Lane leads to the gate of Biddestone Manor, a seventeenth-century house listed Grade II*, whose garden, about five acres with a lake and an arboretum, opens for the National Garden Scheme on set days; its openings for 2026 are over, and dogs are allowed on short leads. Behind the wall by its stable gate is the site of St Peter's, one of Biddestone's two Domesday churches, pulled down in 1846.

Visiting

The green is open at all times and free. It is a lived-in village rather than a visitor attraction, and the walk leaflet asks visitors to use the car park behind the village hall and to park thoughtfully. The White Horse, on the green, is dog friendly and has a garden; it is closed on Mondays except bank holidays and opens only from 5pm from Tuesday to Thursday. Weekday mornings are the quietest time; on summer weekends walkers on the heritage trail gather here at the start and finish.

Getting there

By car, Biddestone is about 8 km west of Chippenham by road; park in the public car park behind the village hall on Yatton Road, SN14 7BZ. Faresaver's 636 bus from Chippenham by way of Corsham stops by the pond, but only twice each way on weekdays and not at weekends; Faresaver's 635 and 95 also call there.

On foot, the Biddestone heritage trail, a 6.5-mile loop to Slaughterford, Ford and back down the By Brook, begins and ends with a circuit of the green.

Nearby

St Nicholas' Church, with its Norman doorway and box pews, is a few minutes along Church Road. Across the fields, St Nicholas' at Slaughterford is the church whose people once worshipped here. Castle Combe, with its market cross and bridge, is a short drive north. Our guide to Cotswold film and TV locations has more on Agatha Raisin.