Chute Forest is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in east

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. The parish is bordered to the east and south by the county of

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

. The village is about northwest of

Andover Andover may refer to: Places Australia *Andover, Tasmania Canada * Andover Parish, New Brunswick * Perth-Andover, New Brunswick United Kingdom * Andover, Hampshire, England ** RAF Andover, a former Royal Air Force station United States * Andov ...

and to the east of Ludgershall.

History

The area was a large

royal forest A royal forest, occasionally known as a kingswood (), is an area of land with different definitions in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The term ''forest'' in the ordinary modern understanding refers to an area of wooded land; however, the ...

by the 13th century and continued in Crown ownership until 1639. It was then an

extra-parochial area In England and Wales, an extra-parochial area, extra-parochial place or extra-parochial district was a geographically defined area considered to be outside any ecclesiastical or civil parish. Anomalies in the parochial system meant they had no ch ...

until it became a civil parish in the 19th century, and an ecclesiastical parish in 1875 after the church was built.

The Chute Hoard

A hoard of

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly ...

coins found in the northeast in 1927 (with further coins found in 1986 and 1994) is the only evidence of prehistoric activity in the parish. The coins are from the 1st century BC. The

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

holds 36 coins while the

Wiltshire Museum The Wiltshire Museum, formerly known as Wiltshire Heritage Museum and Devizes Museum, is a museum, archive and library and art gallery in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The museum was established and is run by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natu ...

at Devizes has others, together with the hollow flint nodule in which they were found.

Chute Lodge

Chute Lodge, in the centre of the parish, is a

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peop ...

built in red brick in 1768 by Sir Robert Taylor, on or near the site of an earlier house. In 1988 the house was designated as

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

Parish church

St Mary's Church, 600 metres north of Chute Lodge, was built between 1870 and 1871 to designs by

J.L. Pearson John Loughborough Pearson (5 July 1817 – 11 December 1897) was a British Gothic Revival architect renowned for his work on churches and cathedrals. Pearson revived and practised largely the art of vaulting, and acquired in it a proficienc ...

and consecrated in 1875. It has been designated as a Grade II* listed building and is now in the care of the

Churches Conservation Trust The Churches Conservation Trust is a registered charity whose purpose is to protect historic churches at risk in England. The charity cares for over 350 churches of architectural, cultural and historic significance, which have been transferred in ...

Local government

Chute Forest is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It is in the area of

Wiltshire Council Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

, which is responsible for almost all significant local government functions.

References

External links

Chute Forest Parish Council

The Chutes community website
* {{authority control Villages in Wiltshire Civil parishes in Wiltshire