Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 1 (2003), p. 121

The latest volume of Wiltshire VCH deals with the eight parishes in the small hundred of Calne. This includes parts of both the ‘chalk’ and the ‘cheese’ areas of Wiltshire, since it comprizes the western edge of the Marl-borough Downs and the low-lying land in the valley of the river Marden west of Calne. There was the traditional division of sheep/corn husbandry on the downland, and dairy farming along the river valley. The number of parishes is small because almost the whole of the western part of the hundred formed part of the large royal estate of Calne. Much of the rest of the hundred was likewise Crown land administered from Calne, and the parish churches continued to be dependent upon the church at Calne. The hundred was bounded on the west by the royal forest of Chippenham.

Calne hundred has always been primarily dependent upon agriculture, although the spinning of yarn and the manufacture of cloth, often combined with farming, also provided employment. Until the nineteenth century Calne was one of the centres of the west-country cloth trade; there were several cloth mills in the town, and no less than 14 mills along a short stretch of the river Marden. Two features of the hundred are of particular interest to agricultural historians. These are the development of Calne as a major centre of bacon curing and food processing, and the creation of a major estate at Bowood, involving a total transformation of the landscape.

As the cloth trade declined, it was replaced at Calne by large scale bacon-curing. This was largely due to the Harris family, who were butchers in the town by 1780. A century later Calne was dominated by the factories of C.& T. Harris, and by those of their competitors. The Harris business alone employed some 230 people and slaughtered 2000 to 3000 pigs each week, producing bacon, sausages and lard. An idealized view of the Harris steam-driven factory in 1887 shows an orderly queue of pigs waiting to enter. The industry continued to flourish in Calne, and C.& T. Harris (Calne) Ltd. had 1171 employees in 1934, and 2116 in 1957.

This aspect of Calne’s history illustrates a difficulty of the VCH approach. For details of how the industry was established, using some of the droves of Irish pigs regularly driven through Calne from the port of Bristol to London, and details of the special method of curing bacon which gave the name ‘Wiltshire Bacon’ such high esteem, the reader must turn to VCH Wiltshire IV, (1959), pp.220–3. This was published before the total collapse of the trade during the 1970s; by 1982 all the factories were closed, and by 1986 they had been demolished.

Another notable feature of the volume is the account of the development of the Bowood estate. This had been part of the royal forest, and in 1754 was purchased by John Petty, earl of Shelburne, whose son, William was created marquess of Lansdowne in 1784. Work on the mansion, garden and parkland employed a succession of notable names including Robert Adam, C.R. Cockerell, Charles Barry, Lancelot Brown and the local firm of ‘grotto-makers’, Josiah Lane of Tisbury. The result is a classic estate landscape with characteristic farms, cottages, park, woodland, a mausoleum, and even an attractive wooden church with a thatched roof. The family still live on the estate, although much of their vast mansion was demolished in 1955.

Throughout the volume the maps and plans are, as usual, clear and informative, but the illustrations which have been such an useful feature of recent volumes are disappointing. There are seventy well-chosen illustrations, but the quality of paper used means that the reproduction is much less sharp than in previous volumes. Apart from this criticism, however, this is an interesting volume, with the customary wealth of detailed research and invaluable references.