Southwick Court

It and its associated garden and orchard are surrounded by a moat, which is fed by a leg of the Lambrok stream originating some distance away to the west of the village of Beckington.

This stream surrounds the house and in turn feeds into an adjoining lake, which is enclosed at the northern end by a weir, also dating from the 15th or 16th century.

Internally, the house retains many of its original late 16th and early 17th century interiors, and displays craftsmanship of a high standard.

The house has a number of intricate timber features including a late 17th-century carved staircase, framing and Tudor-arched stone fireplaces.

Some glass may have been brought from Beckington Castle, a nearby property built in the 17th century by members of the Long family, who also owned Southwick Court for many years.

Twenty years later, in 1294, records show a legal agreement between the Rector of North Bradley and William's son Adam de Greynville who had built a private chapel in the grounds of his house Southwick Court, apparently dedicated to John the Baptist.

The Rector of Bradley agreed to allow services to take place in this chapel,[2] on the condition that only members of the Greynville family and "strangers arriving unexpectedly" could attend.

In 1341, John de Grenville's daughter Alice married the first Sir Humphrey Stafford, later sheriff of Dorset and Somerset under Henry IV.

Upon John's death in around 1349, Sir Humphrey acquired the house and land, and he and his wife lived at Southwick Court for the next several years.

In 1354, Lady Alice Stafford suffered "a very unpleasant experience when several scoundrels which included J Talbot of Torbrigge [Trowbridge], J Tourney of Woolverton and Robert Torney of La Boxe broke the close at Southwick and abducted her, at the same time seriously injuring the servants and removing much of her father's goods.

His mother was one Emma (her surname is unknown) from nearby North Bradley, possibly a servant or a lady-in-waiting at Southwick Court.

Though probably of humble birth herself, John Stafford arranged for her to be entombed after her death in 1446 in a specially constructed chapel within North Bradley parish church.

In 1450, William joined Henry VI's service to fight the insurgents of Jack Cade's Rebellion, but killed in battle at Sevenoaks in Kent.

(His sister Alice was by now married to Sir Edmund Cheyne, member of Parliament for Wiltshire, who lived in another important local house at Brook near Westbury).

Soon after their departure, the Lancastrians attacked, 5,000 Welshmen were massacred, Lord Pembroke and his brother Sir Richard Herbert taken prisoner and beheaded.

As a result, Willoughby's lands were seized by the King, and Southwick Court (and also Brook) were bestowed upon Richard's favourite, Edward Ratcliffe, in 1483.

That change of ownership was to prove only temporary and two years later, Southwick Court was restored to the Willoughby family following Richard's defeat at the Battle of Bosworth.

Sir Robert was ennobled by the new king Henry VII as Lord Willoughby de Brooke and appointed as Steward of the Royal Household.

Henry VII had also brokered Owen's marriage to the heiress Mary de Bohun of Midhurst, who brought with her the Cowdray estate in Sussex, and it was this that became Sir David's principal residence.

Another portion was sold in 1556 by John Owen to Christopher Bayley of Stowford, from a family of wealthy clothiers in Trowbridge, who already had extensive property interests in the area (including the manor of Priston in Somerset).

The manorial system had begun to break down across Britain at the end of the 16th century, and this led to the enclosure of land and a rapid expansion of sheep farming across Wiltshire.

The remains of the "drain" and "carrier" channels dug in this period to irrigate the pastures with water from the Lambrok stream are still clearly visible in the fields surrounding Southwick Court.

[8] However, this case appears to have collapsed, and the Bush family were ejected by Christopher Bayley's granddaughter Rebecca who some years earlier had married Henry Long of Whaddon.

A Puritan, Sherfield was later tried in the Star Chamber and heavily fined for having broken and defaced a stained glass window in the Church of St Edmund in Salisbury.

In 1628, after a fracas in which he assaulted the Royalist-supporting Speaker of the House of Commons, King Charles I issued an order for his arrest "for seditious practises and crimes of a high nature", and Walter was eventually imprisoned in the Tower until 1633.

The younger Sir Walter Long made further revisions to the house in 1693, and left his own mark in the form of his engraved initials SWL.

One part of the estate passed to Sir Philip Parker Long's daughter, Martha, who married John Thynne Howe, Lord Chedworth.

They were still there on the night of the 1861 Census; and in 1864 Mrs Long – an invalid according to newspaper reports – sounded the alarm when ten hay ricks were ignited by lightning during an unnaturally fierce thunderstorm.

The Return of Owners of Land survey of 1873 shows Richard Penruddocke Long to own a total of 13,600 acres in and around Rood Ashton and Trowbridge.

John Long junior appears to have retired from farming after his father's death and he moved to a different house in nearby Woodmarsh, bordering the Southwick Court estate.