Preshute () is a

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 ...

immediately west and northwest of

Marlborough Marlborough or the Marlborough may refer to: Places Australia * Marlborough, Queensland * Principality of Marlborough, a short-lived micronation in 1993 * Marlborough Highway, Tasmania; Malborough was an historic name for the place at the sou ...

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. Unusually for a Wiltshire parish, it does not take its name from any town or village. The population at the 2011 census was 193. The

River Kennet The Kennet is a tributary of the River Thames in Southern England. Most of the river is straddled by the North Wessex Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The lower reaches have been made navigable as the Kennet Navigation, which � ...

and the A4 road cross the parish; the boundary between Marlborough and Preshute is beyond Manton, about along the A4 from the centre of Marlborough. The parish is almost entirely

downland Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is deriv ...

and farmland. The settlements are Manton House (with Manton Stables, where racehorses are trained) and the hamlet of Clatford.

Etymology

The name ''Preshute'' is first attested in 1185, in the form ''Prestcheta'', 1249, as ''Presteshethe'', and 1252, as ''Preschut''. Its first element is thought to be the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

word ("priest"), but its second element is less clear. It could be the Old English word ("cottage"), in which case the name once meant "priest's cottage", or it could be 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 in modern Welsh as ("woodland"), in which case it meant "priest's woodland".Eilert Ekwall,
An Old English Sound-change and Some English Forest Names
, ''Beiblatt zur Anglia: Mitteilungen über englische Sprache und Literatur und über englischen Unterricht'', 36 (1925), 146–51.

History

In the 12th or 13th century the boundary between Preshute and Marlborough was immediately west of Marlborough Castle and the parish included the villages of Manton and Clatford. In 1925 an eastern section, including Preshute church. was transferred to Marlborough and in 1934 the Marlborough boundary moved further west to include Manton.

Church

The

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

Church of St George is at about west of the centre of Marlborough, beyond

Marlborough College Marlborough College is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school (English private boarding school) for pupils aged 13 to 18 in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England. It was founded as Marlborough School in 1843 by the Dean of Manchester, George ...

and just south of the Kennet. It has a 15th-century tower and was restored in 1854 by T.H. Wyatt; it is

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 ...

and forms part of the Marlborough Benefice. This area was identified as Preshute as recently as the 1961 (7th series) Ordnance Survey map but on current maps and road signs it is part of Manton.

Etymology

History

Church

School

See also

References

External links