About Thruxton Village

The first written documentation about Thruxton is found in the Domesday Book. The entry states that a Saxon family had forfeited the land to Gocelyn Corneilles after 1066 who owned the Manor.

Settlement in and around Thruxton pre-dates this time by several thousand years. 3,000 years ago Celtic people farmed the slopes of Thruxton and Snoddington Hills. An Iron Age hill fort at Quarley dates from about the 3rd Century BC until Roman times with evidence of smaller settlements found near Thruxton Down House.

Both of these settlements are near the ancient Harrow Way, a trade link with other settlers that ran from Cornwall to Kent. In Roman times there appears to have been several close settlements with evidence of Roman villas found at Mullenspond, Racedown Farm and also within the grounds of Thruxton Manor. The tessellated pavement found at Mullenspond can now be seen in the British Museum in London.

The village of Thruxton, as we now see it, was really started by the Anglo Saxons who settled after the withdrawal of the Romans in the 5th Century AD. There may even have been some continuity of settlement with Romano-British occupation of the villa on the present Manor site developing into the Manor house of the settlement mentioned in the Domesday Book.

The Manor and village of Thruxton flourished after 1066. The Corneilles family became one of the greater “second tier” landowners and when their lands became part of the great De Lisle family holdings, by marriage, were part of a landholding that included many Manors in the local area. The De Lisle family made Thruxton their main residence; building a large fortified and moated Manor House. In the 16th Century after this branch of the De Lisle family died out, the Manor reverted to the Philpott family who were heavily fined and persecuted for their Catholic beliefs. It was about this time that the large Manor burnt down being replaced with the much smaller existing Manor House.

The village of Thruxton in the 17th and 18th centuries was principally concerned with crop farming.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the village of Thruxton largely followed the road adjacent to the stream to the southeast of the Manor and church, with all houses fronting the road. The A303 was a turnpike road with a tollhouse at Mullenspond. On Stanbury Road there was a ford through the Pillhill Brook at Hamble House. Fields and orchards surrounded the village and footpaths followed the line of the stream into open country.

Between the wars the airfield was built but the village was still largely unchanged. The latter half of the 20th century has seen newer housing built in the surrounding fields with small developments spreading the village along the roads towards the adjacent villages.