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

in east

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

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

. 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.

Etymology

The name ''Chute Forest'' is first attested in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086, in the Latin phrase "silva que vocatur Cetum" ("the wood that is called ''Cetum''"). The name derives from the

Common Brittonic Common Brittonic (; ; ), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages. It is a form of Insular Cel ...

word that survives today in modern Welsh as ("woodland"). Spellings with an ''e'', along the lines of ''Cet'', ''Cette'', ''Chet'' and ''Chette'' dominate the record through the thirteenth century and reflect the usual borrowing of this Brittonic word into Old English. The spelling ''Chute'', first attested for the village that takes its name from the forest in 1268 (as ''Chuth’'') and for the forest itself in 1283 (as ''Chute''), reflects dialectal variation in Old English, specifically the West-Saxon sound-change known as palatal diphthongisation.

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 historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

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 Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

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 established in 1874 in Devizes, Wiltshire, England. The museum was created and is run by the Wiltshire Archae ...

at Devizes has others, together with the hollow flint

nodule Nodule may refer to: * Nodule (geology), a small rock or mineral cluster * Manganese nodule, a metallic concretion found on the seafloor *Nodule (medicine), a small aggregation of cells *Root nodule Root nodules are found on the roots of plants, ...

in which they were found.

Chute Lodge

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

country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire 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 Townhou ...

built in red brick in 1768 by

Sir Robert Taylor Sir Robert Taylor (1714 – 27 September 1788) was an English architect and sculptor who worked in London and the south of England. Early life Born at Woodford, Essex, Taylor followed in his father's footsteps and started working as a stonema ...

, 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 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, Hi ...

Parish church

St Mary's Church, 600 metres north of Chute Lodge, was built between 1870 and 1871 to designs by J.L. Pearson 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, known between 1889 and 2009 as Wiltshire County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire (district), Wiltshire in South West England, and has its headquarters a ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a type of local government, local authority in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Unitary authorities are responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are ...

, 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 Wiltshire places with etymologically Brittonic names