Welcome to the Wroughton History Group website
Programme
Evening meetings are held at 7.30 at St Joseph’s Church Hall Devizes Road Wroughton, SN4 0RZ (3words///cried.member.left).
Our 2024 programme continues with a talk from Captain Alan Smith “Reminiscences of a Concorde Test Pilot” In the late 60s and 70s Concorde was the most tested civil aircraft of all time. There were three French prototype aircraft at Toulouse and three British at RAF Fairford until the aircraft went into airline service in 1976. Our speaker Alan Smith now in his 90s, is the sole survivor of the eleven test pilots based at Fairford and his talk is about the test flying he personally flew and took part in.
We then take a break over the summer, returning on 5th September with our WHG member Catherine Kemble speaking on “Wroughton’s WW2” – find out about Wroughton’s part in the war effort. How did the village’s civilians cope and contribute?
Everyone is welcome – first visits are free, then returning non-members will be charged £2 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 July 18th.
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.
Membership
Anyone is welcome to join – the annual subscription is currently £15, from April 2024. Please contact the committee or come along to a meeting if you want to join the group. Our simple constitution can be viewed here.
Exhibition – 7th October 2023
On Saturday 7th October 10am to 4pm WHG held an event at the Ellendune Centre – this included activities for children, various stands including some finds made in the village, a history of the Wroughton WI, history of Listers and a vintage Post Office display. The Wiltshire Finds Officer , The Royal British Legion, Richard Jeffries Museum and the Parish Footpaths Group attended. Bill King brought some of his extensive WW2 collection. A huge thank you to everyone that made the event a success – especially everyone that attended.
Preddy’s Cart
History of the Wroughton High Street Post Office
2023 Wroughton Carnival
WHG had a stall and a parade float at the 2023 carnival – the carnival theme was gardening and growing. The WHG float was farming during the 1940s and featured several farmers and land girls, as well as vintage farm implements and pictures of village farms from the 1940s
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 2024 AGM was held on 25th April. Tony Edmunds stood down as chair and has been replaced by Beverley Margerison. 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. Visit our ‘now and then’ page where we will add the pictures.
Romans in Wroughton
Roman remains have been found on the airfield. Cotswold Archaeology worked at the site of the Science Museum storage facility.
A Romano British cemetery was discovered containing 20 graves. As the burials were of varying ages, they are likely to be from the local settlement. Two brooches found suggest the site dates to the 2nd century AD. Also found were lime kilns that produced the mortar used in Roman buildings and loom weights used in making cloth. The group celebrated the discovery as part of the 2019 carnival
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.
