Liddington

The parish has been an area of settlement since the earliest times. The ancient Ridgeway traverses the parish just north of the village and the Iron Age hill-fort known as Liddington Castle, which is a scheduled monument, overlooks the present-day village.^[2] Liddington is recorded in the late Saxon period, around 940 AD. The Domesday Book of 1086 refers to the settlement as Ledentone.^[3] The population of the parish peaked at 454 in 1841 and then gradually declined.^[4]

The spelling Lyddington has sometimes been used, and still appears in the name of the Church of England parish.^[5]

Most of the village was designated as a Conservation Area in 1990.^[6] The Great Western Hospital, a large district hospital, was built in the north-west corner of the parish in 2002.^[7]

A church at Liddington is first mentioned in 1291.^[8] All Saints, the Church of England parish church, stands south of the present village and is a Grade I listed building.^[9] It has a 13th-century chancel, a three-bay nave from the 14th or 15th century, and a plain three-stage west tower. The north aisle is described by Historic England as 13th-century and little altered. The arches below the tower are off-centre, indicating that there was a south aisle in the past.^[10] The church was heavily restored in 1847 by J. H. Hakewill;^[10] the work included renewal of most windows and the nave roof, and the addition of the south porch.^[8]

The oldest feature of the church is the font, a tapered stone tub of c.1200 on a 19th-century base.^[11] The original ring of five bells, now unringable, includes three cast in 1663 by Roger and William Purdue. A new ring of six dated 2016 by John Taylor & Co is installed below them.^[12] The churchyard has the remains of a 15th-century cross: only the base and a stump of the shaft.^[13]

The church was anciently attached to Shaftesbury Abbey as a prebend, and the prebendaries or rectors – who did not live at Liddington – provided a vicar to serve the church.^[8] Although the prebend ceased after William Sharington bought the manor in 1543, it came back into use towards the end of the 17th century and was still recognised in 1975.^[14]

The benefice was united with that of Wanborough in 1975,^[14] and at some point the parishes were united too.^[5] Today the parish is part of a larger benefice which also covers Bishopstone and Hinton Parva.^[15]

Notable rectors include the mathematician Nathaniel Torporley (around 1611) and William Baker Pitt (from 1882 to 1935, remembered as the founder of Swindon Town Football Club).^[16]

Liddington Hill was the site of a control bunker for a World War II 'Starfish' bombing decoy site. This would have been used to control fires, which would have acted as a decoy to enemy planes targeting the town of Swindon to the north. The bunker had a hatch in its concrete roof and consisted of two rooms off a central passage; the room on the right housed generators, while the control room was on the left.^[17]

Just east of the village is the children's adventure centre PGL Liddington,^[18] based at the historic King Edward's Place. Whilst the centre takes its name from Liddington as the nearest village, the centre is in the neighbouring parish of Wanborough.