Kimpton History
There were certainly people living in Kimpton more than 50,000 years ago – recently a stone axe used by prehistoric man was found in a local garden.
Ice ages came and went and by 8,000 years ago the shape of the land was much as it is now. Stone tools have been found which are about 5,000 years old, and in excavations carried out between 1966 and 1970 a Bronze Age cremation cemetery, in use from 2,100 BC to 600 BC, was discovered at Kalis Corner on the edge of the parish.
In the Iron Age (about 600 BC – 43 AD) there was a settlement at High View and in Roman times there was a farmstead at Littleton below High View. The Saxons were here, a Saxon bowl has been found in the edge of a Bronze Age barrow (no longer visible) above Kimpton.
Written history begins with Domesday in 1086. There are three entries relating to the present parish of Kimpton, Chementune, Liteltone and Sotesdene. These became the three manors of Kimpton, Littleton (originally stretching right up to the Wiltshire border and including Little Shoddesden), and Great Shoddesden.
There were certainly people living in Kimpton more than 50,000 years ago – recently a stone axe used by prehistoric man was found in a local garden.
Ice ages came and went and by 8,000 years ago the shape of the land was much as it is now. Stone tools have been found which are about 5,000 years old, and in excavations carried out between 1966 and 1970 a Bronze Age cremation cemetery, in use from 2,100 BC to 600 BC, was discovered at Kalis Corner on the edge of the parish.
In the Iron Age (about 600 BC – 43 AD) there was a settlement at High View and in Roman times there was a farmstead at Littleton below High View. The Saxons were here, a Saxon bowl has been found in the edge of a Bronze Age barrow (no longer visible) above Kimpton.
Written history begins with Domesday in 1086. There are three entries relating to the present parish of Kimpton, Chementune, Liteltone and Sotesdene. These became the three manors of Kimpton, Littleton (originally stretching right up to the Wiltshire border and including Little Shoddesden), and Great Shoddesden.
In later times Kimpton was relatively poor. In the 1861 census most children in the neighbouring parishes were listed as ‘scholars’, ie they attended school, very few of the Kimpton children did so, they were ‘ploughboys’ or not employed at all. Kimpton school was not opened until 1873, not long before elementary education became compulsory. When the school moved to its present location in the 1970s it was replaced by the new village hall which was built approximately on the site of the old school.
Many of the houses in Kimpton date back to the eighteenth century or earlier. Of the three manor houses, Kimpton Manor (originally the rectory, the old manor house was knocked down in the nineteenth century), is the oldest, some portions having been built in the fourteen hundreds. Some parts of Littleton Manor have been dated to the sixteenth century and Shoddesden Manor to the late seventeenth century. The earliest parts of the church date back to the thirteenth century. There is considerable new building in Kimpton, of homes both large and small. Kimpton today is a large parish in area, and it must be remembered that when the county boundary was moved at the end of the twentieth century Kimpton lost Faberstown to Ludgershall. The population in 2011 was 337, compared with 371 in 1851 and 281 in 1891. Today most of the inhabitants are retired or work outside the village but this was not always so. In the 1851 census for example, 95 worked on the land, either as agricultural labourers, shepherds or farmers. Today the number working on the land and living in the village could be counted on the fingers of one hand. In the middle of the twentieth century Kimpton not only had a pub, happily still thriving, but a village shop and post office (in the house now called ‘The Vines’), a resident policeman and at one point a café . In the 1940s the shop had the only telephone, there were maybe two or three cars in the village – now perhaps two or three per household! |