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.

rudloescene
rudloescene

27th July 2020 and another one bites the dust. Approval has been given (by Wiltshire Council) for change of use from public house to residential of the Cross Keys at Pickwick - see WC's webpage: https://unidoc.wiltshire.gov.uk/UniDoc/Document/Search/DSA,910740

So Pickwick has now, effectively, lost all its pubs as the last one standing, the Hare and Hounds, is a shadow of its former self. Owned by some half-baked organisation called Pub Leisure, it has lost its atmosphere, its substantial furnishings (with cheap, uncomfortable replacements) and its customers.

Times have changed and are changing. In spite of the Two Pigs being a very popular pub, not one of its regulars or locals (apart from one - the exception that proved the rule) made a representation to Wiltshire Council about its change of use from pub to residential. Now, with the Cross Keys, the only representation has been one in favour of its conversion (from a local property developer).

The Cross Keys, as far as I know, was a coaching inn dating from the early 18th century on a local turnpike of the Bath Road. So two 'ancient' Pickwick inns are now lost in the space of a few years.

The former Cross Keys at the head of Biddestone Lane on 7th February 2021
The Cross Keys (and its crossroads) on 7th February 2021
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© Paul Turner