Welcome to the Wroughton History Group website
2026 Calendars
We have some 2026 calendars available – cost is £8 – we will deliver within Wroughton. Please phone Dougie Sleeth 01793 813258 if you would like one.
Exciting news – with support from Wroughton Parish Council, WHG will be opening a museum to display our collection of Wroughton related items. The Parish Council have agreed to lease WHG the Maunsell Way pavilion, which will become a village museum. We hope to open in Spring 2026.
There is lots to do! We are starting with a painting weekend on 24th/25th January – any volunteers will be welcome.
Programme
Evening meetings are held at 7.30 at St Joseph’s Church Hall Devizes Road Wroughton, SN4 0RZ (3words///cried.member.left).
Our 2026 programme begins on January 29th when we welcome back – Bill King who will be speaking on “Steps to Victory”
Steps to Victory is a new talk by Bill King covering the final 18 months of WW2. It’s always good to welcome him and Flora back to Wroughton.
The next talk is on February 26th – Helen Rayner will be talking about “The Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition 1955-58”
Helen, one of our HG members, is giving her second talk to the group, this time inspired by one of the vehicles stored at the Science Museum’s National Collections Centre at Wroughton. Helen says she chose February as it should be easier to imagine the conditions in the Antarctic!
Everyone is welcome – non-members will be charged £3 per event.
Open evenings are for everyone to get together over tea/coffee and chat about events – members often bring items of interest, such as old photographs, for a group discussion. The next open meeting is on February 12th
We have a Facebook group and reminders about the talks and events are added there.
We do have some social events – days out (see programme for details), Christmas Crimble and an annual dinner
Oral History project
We are compiling a Social History record of the village from people’s stories, recollections and memories (thanks again to Bob Habgood who has already taken part in the project). Were you born in Wroughton, did you grow up here or have you lived in the village a long time? Then maybe you would like to take part. This will be in the form of an informal interview with a couple of our members, where an audio recording will be taken and maybe they can copy some of your photos to use.
If you are interested in taking part then talk to Doug Sleeth at the Friday Market or contact Adrian Marsh on 07791041672
Membership
Anyone is welcome to join – the annual subscription is currently £20, from April 2025. Please contact the committee or come along to a meeting if you want to join the group. Our simple constitution can be viewed here.
Donations
WHG is always grateful for donations of Wroughton related items. Recently Bob Habgood donated two local Victorian ginger beer bottles and some Swan Inn items (including an IOU from 1939). Thank you Bob.
The Allen family have recently given us a set of photos of the Wroughton Fire Brigade and the Duvall family memorabilia of the 1977 carnival (including a carnival tea towel). Again many thanks.
All donated items are recorded and put into our Maunsell Way Pavilion store/museum or Ellendune Centre store. If anyone wants to carry out out any research we are happy for documents and research to be borrowed or viewed.
Please do not throw away any documents, photos or items relating to the history of Wroughton – all donations help us record the history of an ever changing village.
Walks
The history group have produced a walk booklet that features many of buildings mentioned on the site (including racing stables, mills, manor houses and ‘lost’ pubs). The walk is a booklet that can be downloaded and printed: Wroughton Village Walk.
We also occasionally run guided walks – look out on Facebook for details of these.
AGM
Our 2025 AGM was held on 3rd April. Details of the committee can be found on the contacts page
Wroughton – then and now
WHG have started a new project of photographing parts of Wroughton undergoing changes, so that we have a record of how the village is changing. If you know of any planned changes please let us know so that we can capture the view before it changes. We were able to take some pictures of Haskins before it closed in 2025.
Visit our ‘now and then’ page where we will add the pictures.
Books and activities
Details of all our books can be found on our books for sale page.
Although we are very serious about our research but we do have a lot of fun too. We never fail to have a laugh at our meetings and we very much enjoy our annual outing and trips to local villages and places of interest in the summer, not to mention our pleasure in taking members of other history groups round the older parts of Wroughton.
Members enjoy our annual croquet lesson August 2024
Members enjoying dinner in January 2024