Welcome to the Wroughton History Group website
History Group Museum – 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 will open on 4th April 2026 at 2pm until 5pm, and then subsequent weekends – dates will be announced soon. Due to budget constraints we will start with one display room and hope to open a second room in July 2026. However the photobooks will be available to view.
On Saturday 14th Feb we had a visit at the pavilion from one of WHG’s founder members – Hilary (in the white coat). She enjoyed a cup of tea whilst she heard about the plans for the space.
Painting is now completed! We are now building storage and display areas.
Programme
Evening meetings are held at 7.30 at St Joseph’s Church Hall Devizes Road Wroughton, SN4 0RZ (3words///cried.member.left).
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.
Our speaker for March 26th is Dr. Christopher (Chris) Scott “John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough”.
The Duke of Marlborough is acknowledged as Britain’s greatest general, ranking alongside Alexander, Wellington and Napoleon on the world’s military stage, but how much do people know about him or why he has such a reputation? For example, did you know his vast wealth was founded on a naked leap of chivalry and preservation of a lady’s honour? Or that he caused massive embarrassment at the welcome to England given to King George 1? Chris Scott will reveal the man behind the name and tell the tale of how this son of a civil war cavalier won his fame and became a national hero.
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 March 12th – we will be planning for the new museum.
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