Back in 1984, some of the members of Market Lavington and Easterton’s Darby and Joan Club wrote essays which were entered in a writing competition. Some of these have been printed in a booklet and we have a couple of copies of this in the museum.
The content of two of these essays is of local relevance. Both of these are entitled My Bit of Wiltshire. We will start by looking at part of what Vera Shergold wrote. She began with a childhood memory of visiting the area in the north of Market Lavington and Easterton, which later became her home.
It seemed that there was no rail service on a Good Friday, so it was safe to walk along the railway line from Lavington Station. (The railway line still runs through our parish, but Lavington Station has closed and the nearest station now is in Westbury.)
We are not sure but, maybe, the idyllic woodland described by Vera was in the vicinity of West Park Farm or Fiddington Farm. (Perhaps a local reader with a long memory could pinpoint Farm Woods for us.)
Elm trees would have been common in this area when Vera was young. Sadly most succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970s and 80s. Now we are also concerned for some of the other large native trees she mentioned, due to Ash Dieback and Sudden Oak Death.
We will look at some more of Vera Shergold’s writing next time.
Market Lavington Museum 
September 16, 2021 at 7:42 am |
Love this! Vera Shergold was a distant cousin on my Mums side. We used to visit the farm in Easterton as children.
September 16, 2021 at 9:25 am |
Thank you, Clive. More to follow in next two blogs.
September 16, 2021 at 9:46 am
Thanks that’s great. I’ll look forward to reading them. I believe Fiddington Farm was renovated a fair few years ago now.
September 16, 2021 at 10:03 pm |
I do have another thought here could ‘Farm Woods’ be a corruption or local name for ‘Parham Woods’ which both bordered the farm and the railway
September 17, 2021 at 10:06 pm |
Looking at an old OS map of around 1900 which shows the railway (which my grandmother Mary Baker remembers being built) there are no woods on the London side of the station shown until Parham woods. We also used to call these woods Farm woods, never Parham wood, so I think Parham woods are the location. I am struggling to remember a pond there but something nags at my mind to indicate there might have been a scrape of a pond there when I visited in the 60s.
September 18, 2021 at 7:01 am |
Great. Thanks for your local knowledge, James. We hadn’t heard of the local name for Parham Woods.