Copy of an article which appeared in the Wiltshire Herald and Advertiser, Friday, 2nd October, 1953. (Submitted by Mrs. Reg Bartlett)

The Changing Scene - Hullavington

RURAL UPHEAVAL WHEN THE AERODROME ARRIVES
by R, Barry O'Brien

One memory has always been bright for the old Mr Henry Wicks, of Hullavington and that is the memory of the day when he and his brother, Aaron, went to the Royal Show that day, now many years ago, was truly royal. The late King was there, and Gloucester, and the late Duke of Kent. And they stopped at the stand where the brothers Wicks were working to see how a hurdle was made.

Henry and Aaron had brought with them from Hullavington a small model of the type of hurdle that they made for the farmers of their parish. The Queen picked it up, and remarked upon it, while the rest of the Royal family gathered around. That hurdle today hangs forgotten in a shed, a relic of a dying craft. Aaron is dead, and his brothers no longer go to the woods in Maytime, before the birds start nesting, to cut the ash trees from which they make their wares. A few hurdles are still made in Hullavington by other men, but only for markets and horse shows, The sheep that kept the brothers Wicks in business have vanished from the scene, and the fields where they grazed have become an aerodrome.

At one time, there were five Wicks brothers in the business that their father started; Aaron, George (who is also dead), William, Henry and Jim. Their workshop was at Holly House on the Green, though often they made new hurdles on the spot where they went out to farms to repair old ones. "We sold our hurdles as fast as we could make them", Jim told me. "We used to get orders for ten and twenty dozen at a time."

That was twenty years or more ago, when there were at least 1,000 breeding ewes on the farms around Hullavington. One farmer, Mr. William Sealy had 200. They were kept in hurdles, and moved in rotation around the farm, while the land was ploughed and sown behind them. "We never used artificial fertilizer in those days", he told me. "The sheep kept the land manured. They were the life and soul of the farm, and the most interesting part of it. You could always learn something from them. We felt lost when they went, but they had to go. The government told the farmers they must produce more milk. That meant cows, and your couldn't afford to keep the two."

Mr. Sealy, who was formally a member of Hullavington Parish Council, started in business with his uncle, the late Mr. Oswold Harry, with 400 acres at May's Farm, which they ran in conjunction with him present 200 acres at Gardner's farm. But the days of May's Farm were numbered. Shortly before the war, came an Air Ministry decision that was to have the profoundest effect on this small wiltshire village. Hullavington was to be the site of an aerodrome.

As it happened, the aerodrome was not such an eyesore as pessimistic villagers expected. It is, in fact, quite attractive with buildings of local stone to blend with the surroundings. But there is no mistaking the large hangers, camouflaged with turf and bushes, or the aircraft that stand outside them. They are the first things that you see as you drive from Chippenham - an immediate and obvious example of the changes seen by the parish during the last 20 years.

The villagers, by now, are used to the aerodrome. The new houses that they brought to Hullavington in the shape of married quarters have become an excepted part of the village scene. The aerodrome has also brought benefits. It has put the parish on the map, increased its population, provided employment, and brought trade to the local shops.

But the first effects of its coming, to the farming community at any rate, were extremely alarming. It took most of the land of May's Farm, leaving only 116 acres.

Bell Farm was next to go - all 500 acres of it - and its house and buildings were pulled down. The aerodrome took nearly half of a farm at Upper Stanton, where there had been 500 breeding ewes, and part of another farm at Lower Stanton. In place of fields came tarmac runways and the drone of aircraft to fill the air.

Sheep survived for only a short while after the coming of the aerodrome. Mr Alfred Bye, now 82, first arrived in Hullavington 20 years ago as a shepherd, still carried hurdles around the fields, and the Wicks family continued to make them, but they could see that the need for their craft would not last. Already, in fact, they had turned to other trades. Jim, who now breeds budgerigars for sale, had brought himself a few acres and some pigs, while Aaron bought a lorry and had started a coal and carrying business - carrying included the transport of the local football team to matches.

They were but two of the many people who began to look for new ways of earning a living. This does not mean that the people of Hullavington changed their way of life, as it were, overnight. People do not do that, and in a country district especially the past dies hard. Old crafts continued and still continue. There is still a village blacksmith, Mr Reg Bartlett, carrying on the trade that was practised by his farther in Hullavington for many years. Though the horse has virtually disappeared from the farm, a blacksmith can still keep in business repairing machinery.

But other trades were not so adaptable and fell by the wayside. You will not, for example, find a harness maker in Hullavington today. The premises where the late Mr, Ephraim Ayres carried on this trade are now a farmhouse, the home of his daugher, Mrs. Charlotte Greenman.

In the grey stone walls of Hullavington, the atmosphere of the past remains, but everywhere the scene has changed. The school where Mrs. Wicks, the widow of Aaron Wicks, taught for sixteen years, has expanded and has a larger staff. When she came to Hullavington, she told me, there was no bus service, and no mains water or electricity. Villagers took their water supply from wells and a standpipe in the street, paying 8s a year for a key to the pump instead of a water rate. Now there are buses every day to Malmesbury and Chippenham, and the village enjoys mains water and electricity.

The most recent change is, perhaps, the most significant. Twelve months ago, considerable property at Hullavington, held on lease by the Grittleton estate, reverted to Eton College, which now owns most of the village. The lease had not expired but the estate wanted to be free of responsibility for property which had become more of a liability than an asset.

This article supplied by Janice Tiley