Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
19th April 2022 and after dropping someone off at Chippenham Station for an 8 o'clock train, what to do until the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre opens at 9:30 (I had reserved a session there)? The answer? Take a stroll across Cocklebury meadows and along the B4069 to Langley Burrell passing Kilvert's Parsonage along the way. However, the parsonage cannot be seen from the road and the only hint that the parsonage lies beyond is that all the Wiltshire Council bins at the entrance are labelled KP. Hoping also, if time allows, to reach the Langley Burrell end of Maud Heath's Causeway. The title picture is of a Langley Burrell garden with a Giles Gilber Scott, red telephone box and a monumental cedar.
St Andrew's Church (and the red roofs of Timber Street?) from Cocklebury meadows
In Cocklebury Lane with the new railway bridge ahead
Cocklebury Lane hedgerow with bramble, horse chestnut and holly
Looking towards Chippenham from the lane that runs through Langley Burrell, Kilvert's Parsonage lies beyond the trees. Before the fame brought to it by Kilvert, it was simply known as Langley Burrell Rectory.
Langley Burrell Rectory from an image in the (my) 1986 Century Hutchinson edition of Kilvert's Diary
The local office of NFU Mutual Insurance Society can be found in the village (as always, pity about the bin)
Langley Burrell Village Hall
No traffic in this shot but the road through the village seems to be a 'rat run' (from where to where?)
A pair of substantial, 19th-century village cottages
The gate is open to Yer Tiz
A Langley Burrell garden
As suspected, didn't have the time to get to Maud Heath's Causeway - the right-hand board here in the village chronicles the history
There are a few properties, detached from the village proper, on the other side of the B4069 Swindon Road
And here's another one beyond the oaks (and the B4069)
Meanwhile, Chippenham creeps ever closer. The houses of Bird's Marsh View now form the northern boundary but thousands more are in the offing. Look at the current demographic of Swindon (compared with 20 years ago) to find the elephant in the room.
Heading back down Cocklebury Lane; there's more than enough comfrey here to make a poultice
The promised electrification of the Great Western main line from London to Bristol ends here, just short of Chippenham Station
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