Welcome to Broad Hinton

BROAD Hinton lies about a dozen minutes and a world away from the bustling heart of Swindon.

Broad Hinton's history goes at least as far back as before the Norman Conquest, if Saxon relics on the site of its church are anything to go by. During the intervening years, it has grown from a scattered group of farms to a thriving village.

It has just four main streets - High Street, Post Office Lane, Ewe Tree Road and Summers Road - as well as two more recently built residential areas, Fortunes Field and Pitchens End.

Where once its population would have been made up of people whose families had lived there for generations, now such people mingle with relative newcomers attracted by the idea of country living and perhaps the proximity of Swindon and its strong job market.

According to local people, the institutions whose decline has signalled the death knell for the traditions and identities of many villages across the country are not declining at all in Broad Hinton. The church - St Peter ad Vincula - enjoys respectable attendance levels and is, along with the village hall, a focus for local life. Meanwhile, the village shop does brisk business and there are village clubs and societies catering for a host of interests.

Saxon relics have been found at the church of St Peter ad Vincula, although the earliest written records date from the 13th century. The church guidebook names every vicar since 1299, beginning with John Martyn and taking the list of incumbents right up to the present one, Warren Sellers, who joined in 1992.

One of the village's best-known features is the white horse carved into a downland hillside nearby. The 90 sq ft design was created in 1838 by two local men, Robert Witt and Henry Eatwell. During World War 2 it was "blacked out" for fear of its being used as a landmark by German bomber navigators or invading soldiers.

Villager David Brewer, a lifelong champion of Broad Hinton and a former parish clerk, lost a battle against cancer last year, aged just 62. However, he left a lasting memorial in the form of a book called Images of a Wiltshire Downland Village. Filled with photographs taken locally throughout the 20th century, and which cover every conceivable occasion, the book is available from the village shop.

The school, built during the reign of George II, was extensively refurbished and rebuilt in the late 19th century, amid the great Victorian drive toward ensuring as many British children as possible secured at least a basic education.

Periodic extensions and alterations have been carried out in the years since, and a new classroom and toilet block is being built - £15,000 of the cost was raised by villagers.