Froxfield is a village and civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire. The parish is on the Wiltshire-West Berkshire border, and the village lies on the A4 national route about west of Hungerford and east of Marlborough.
Froxfield village is on a stream that is a tributary of the River Dun. The road between London and Bristol follows the valley of the stream and passes through the village, having followed this course since at least the 13th century.
The Kennet and Avon Canal follows the Dun valley through Froxfield parish, passing within of the village. The canal has a series of locks in the parish, from Oakhill Down Lock to Froxfield Bottom Lock. The Reading to Taunton railway line also follows the river through the parish below the village.
Archaeology
There used to be three bowl barrows in the south-west part of the parish, close to the boundary with Chisbury parish. These suggest human occupation in the area some time in the Neolithic or Bronze Age.
In 1725 the remains of a Roman villa were found at Rudge Coppice about north-west of the village. Remains excavated on the site include a Roman mosaic floor depicting the figure of a man, coins, human burials, a stone statuette of Attis and a champlevé-enamelled bronze bowl known as the Rudge Cup, that appears to depict Hadrian's Wall, and lists its five westernmost forts.
History
The Kennet and Avon Canal was opened through Froxfield parish in 1799, and the Berks and Hants Extension Railway took the same route, immediately north of the canal, in 1862. The nearest station was some southwest of Froxfield village, at Great Bedwyn. The canal was restored in the 1970s; the railway and station are still in use.
The population of Froxfield parish peaked at 625 at the 1841 census, owing to stagecoach activity along the Bath road; numbers declined steadily as traffic took to the railways. Between 1951 and 1981 the population was below 300, then increased after housebuilding during the 1980s.
RAF Ramsbury, used by the United States Army Air Forces between 1942 and 1946, extended into the extreme north of the parish.
Manor
Between AD 801 and 805, one Byrhtelm granted land at Froxfield to Ealhmund, Bishop of Winchester. There is no further record of Froxfield's manorial tenure from then until the 13th century. The Domesday Book of 1086 does not mention Froxfield, and may therefore have included the manor as part of another landholding.
Froxfield reappears in the historical record in 1242–43, when Baldwin de Redvers, 6th Earl of Devon was its feudal overlord. In 1275 the overlord was Baldwin's heir Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon, but there is no evidence of Froxfield passing to her heirs. John de Cobham, 3rd Baron Cobham was overlord in 1389, but there is no record of Froxfield's overlordship thereafter.
Manorial tenants of Froxfield included Walter Marshal, 5th Earl of Pembroke (died 1245) and John Droxford, who was Bishop of Bath and Wells 1309–1329.
In 1390 Sir William Sturmy gave the manor to Easton Priory, which then held Froxfield until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1536 the Crown granted the manor to Sir Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, who in 1547 made himself Duke of Somerset. After the death of John Seymour, 4th Duke of Somerset in 1675, his widow Sarah Seymour, Duchess of Somerset married Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine. However, when she died in 1694 she left most of Froxfield Manor as an endowment to found the Broad Town charity and Duchess of Somerset's Hospital almshouses (see below). The hospital sold most of its lands in the parish in 1920–22.
In 1922 Sir Ernest Wills, 3rd Baronet, part-owner of the W.D. & H.O. Wills tobacco company, bought Froxfield Manor Farm, before purchasing the adjacent Elizabethan country house, Littlecote House, in 1929. In 1965 William Geoffrey Rootes, 2nd Baron Rootes bought some other parts of the manor lands and added them to his estate of North Standen and Oakhill. In 1995 Wills's grandson Sir Seton Wills, 5th Baronet still held part of the original estate north of London Road.
Church and chapel
The Church of England parish church of All Saints is from the 12th century and is built of flint and sarsen. The chancel was rebuilt in the 13th century with Early English Gothic lancet windows. In the 14th new windows were inserted in the nave and a north door was added. The Perpendicular Gothic west window is 15th century, as is the partly timber-framed porch. The font is from the 12th or 13th century. There are two bells, one cast c.1699 and the other in 1887.