Bremilham, also known as Cowage or Cowich, is a small settlement and former

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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in north

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated to Wilts) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It borders Gloucestershire to the north, Oxfordshire to the north-east, Berkshire to the east, Hampshire to the south-east, Dorset to the south, and Somerset to ...

, England. It is near the hamlet of Foxley in the parish of Norton. The nearest town is

Malmesbury Malmesbury () is a town and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England, which lies approximately west of Swindon, northeast of Bristol, and north of Chippenham. The older part of the town is on a hilltop which is almost surrounded by the upp ...

, about away to the north east. The place-name 'Bremilham' is first attested in 1065, as ''Bremelham'', and means 'village where brambles or

blackberries BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

grew'. In 1881 the parish had a population of 25. On 25 March 1884 the parish was abolished and its land divided among Foxley, Westport St Mary and Brokenborough parishes. In 1934 Foxley (with Bremilham) was transferred to the civil parish of Norton. On some present-day maps, only Cowage Farm is shown. Bremilham was a small

ecclesiastical parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

until 1893 when it was united with Foxley.

Church

There was probably a chapel at Bremilham in 1179, when Amesbury Priory was granted the tithes; by 1289 there was a rector. In 1874 the benefice was united with Foxley, and from 1951 Foxley with Bremilham was held in plurality with that of Corston with Rodbourne. Today the parish is part of the Gauzebrook group of churches. Bremilham's tiny

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

church claims to be the smallest in England, measuring ten feet by eleven feet. It is either the surviving part of a 15th-century church (Historic England) or a mid-19th century rebuild on the site of the chancel of the demolished church, for use as a mortuary chapel (Victoria County History). The building was recorded as

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in 1986. One service is held each year. The church has no dedication and the parish registers go back only to 1813. On 26 or 27 February 2020 the church bell, which used to hang on an oak beam inside the church, was stolen. The bell was originally from the church in Foxley which swapped its bell for Bremilham's in the 1870s.

References

{{Reflist Hamlets in Wiltshire Former civil parishes in Wiltshire