Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Skip to content

Blewbury’s Green Lungs

January 31, 2022

The last in our series on the green spaces that help shape the special character of our village covers privately-owned land at Parsonage Farm and Orchard Dene.

In the heart of the village, Parsonage Farm is bounded by South Street and two small streams that run down to Watt’s Lane. The western stream provides a natural boundary between Orchard Dene and the garden of Parsonage Farm. Both properties were once part of the ancient prebendal (church) manor of Blewbury. Parsonage Farm was probably the main holding of this manor, and would have had a fine house (long gone) to serve the canons of Salisbury Cathedral when in residence. (Bishop Osmund, a nephew of William the Conqueror, was given church lands in Blewbury, and these were among many properties mined to endow the new cathedral in 1091.) Parsonage Farm was a thriving dairy farm, including a small retail unit called Robinson’s Dairy, until the post-war compulsory purchase of its fields to the east (for ‘Eastfields’) rendered it uneconomical, although rural links remained – there was a blacksmith’s forge here until the 1970s.

The 1805 Enclosure Award refers to Orchard Dene – the field that shelters the Blewbury Wagon – rather obviously as ‘part of an orchard’. At the end of the 18th century, land in this area was farmed by Thomas Watt, whose name lives on in the public footpath leading from South Street to the north side of the churchyard. It is from Watt’s Lane that walkers can gain the best view of both green spaces – these views provide us with a 21st century sense of Blewbury’s very rural origins. Both Orchard Dene and Parsonage Farm are home to a number of mature trees including chestnut, ash and blackthorn. At Parsonage, much of the ground is deliberately left to itself, providing an abundant home for insects and birds including green woodpeckers, little owls, tawny owls and red kites. There are also plenty of squirrels, muntjac and foxes. Orchard Dene and the land at Parsonage Farm help to form ‘the core of paddocks, orchards and streams’ referenced in the 1985 village plan – special places ‘for us, and for those who come after us’. Blewbury is lucky that the owners of both places are custodians who wish to keep nature right at the heart of our village.  Sustainable Blewbury