Britford is a village and civil parish beside the River Avon about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south-east of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England.

[1] Britford village lies towards the east of the parish, about 1.3 miles (2.1 km) south-east of Salisbury Cathedral.

The parish extends some 3 miles (4.8 km) westward across agricultural land, with no named settlements;[2] in this area, about 1 mile south-west of the village, a hospital begun in the Second World War has expanded into the large Salisbury District Hospital which serves a wide area.

[3] Excavations in 1938–39 revealed the sites of granaries, storage pits and a circular house nearly 50 feet (15 m) in diameter.

[4] Great Woodbury, 1 mile (1.6 km) from the village, is the remains of an Iron Age hill fort.

[7] The manor of Britford, together with that of Bramshaw nearby in Hampshire, appears to have been granted by one of the Norman kings to the de Lacy family sometime during the 12th century.

[3] In 1664 an Act of Parliament authorised the conversion of the River Avon into a navigation between Salisbury and the English Channel at Christchurch.

The tall nave survives from a substantial Saxon church of the 8th or 9th century,[21] although it has been rebuilt except for the lower parts of the north and south walls.

[22] Julian Orbach, extending Nikolaus Pevsner's description of the church, calls the arches the "sensation of the interior"[24] and notes Rosemary Cramp's suggestion that there was a royal tomb here.

[26] In the 14th century the chancel and north and south transepts were added, making the church the cruciform building it is today.

[23] A tomb-chest in the chancel, under a 14th-century arch, is supposed to be that of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham who was executed in Salisbury in 1483.

[3] Other memorials include a marble book listing the descent of the Jervoise family (by John Bacon the Younger, 1820) and in the mausoleum a bronze heraldic achievement for the 5th Earl of Radnor (died 1900).

[3] John Robartes of Longford Castle, later 1st Earl of Radnor, paid for the 1764 work and had a family mausoleum added to the north-west corner of the north transept in 1764[21] or 1777.

[24] The building was restored in 1872–3 to the designs of George Edmund Street: the work included changes to the windows and moving the entrance from the west end to the re-opened Saxon south doorway.

[22] He had the Radnor mausoleum Gothicised, reduced in height, and shortened to make room for a north-east vestry.

[28][29] Monuments in the churchyard include chest tombs from the 18th and 19th centuries,[30] and a carved stone cross commemorating John Wordsworth (bishop of Salisbury until his death in 1911) and his first wife Susan.