Urchfont

Urchfont is a rural village and civil parish in the southwest of the Vale of Pewsey and north of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, about 3+1⁄2 miles (6 km) southeast of the market town of Devizes.

There are remains of several bowl barrows on the downland in the south of the parish,[4][5] and evidence of a late prehistoric or Roman field system on Penning Down.

[7] Domesday Book in 1086 recorded a large settlement of 82 households at Lerchesfonte, with three mills, and land held by St Mary's Abbey, Winchester.

[5] The parish had three tithings, each stretching from north to south: Eastcott (in the west), Urchfont (central) and Wedhampton (east).

Stert, to the north, was anciently linked to Urchfont for church purposes but had been made a separate civil parish by the time of the 1881 census.

Downland in the south of the parish was bought by the War Department in stages from 1897, and today forms part of the military Salisbury Plain Training Area.

[14] Monuments include an aedicula for Thomas Ernle (d. 1725) of Wedhampton[13] and the tomb of Robert Tothill sculpted by Peter Scheemakers in 1753.

[19] Today the churches at Urchfont and Stert are served by the Cannings and Redhorn team ministry, alongside six others in nearby villages.

The Wessex Ridgeway long-distance footpath runs north–south through Urchfont village; to the south it turns west to follow the northern scarp of the Plain towards Westbury.

[24] The Berks and Hants Extension Railway was built through the far northeast of the parish for the GWR in 1862, providing a route from Hungerford via Pewsey to Devizes and further west.

[25] In 2018, proposals were made to reinstate rail access in the Devizes area by building a station at Clock Inn Park, Lydeway, where the Reading–Taunton line is crossed by the A342.

The village hall of 1930 carries the name Erchfont
St Michael's Church, Urchfont
Urchfont Scarecrow Festival: Ali Baba