Bratton, Wiltshire

Bratton House is a grade II* listed country house in Melbourne Street, Bratton, Wiltshire, England. The house dates from 1715 and was built for Philip Ballard. It was enlarged in 1826 for the Seagram family with additional alterations in 1915 and the 1930s. The house (together with other property in Bratton) belonged to the diplomat Horace James Seymour and his wife between 1935 and his death in 1979. In their first year there, they added a Garden House designed by Norman Evill, an assistant of Edwin Lutyens, and the dining room and State Bedroom were redesigned by Edith Bowes-Lyon.During the later years of the Second World War, Bratton House was occupied by St Mary's Convent School, evacuated from Hampstead. Soon after the death of Sir Horace Seymour, the main house was sold to Spencer Douglas Loch, 4th Baron Loch. He died in 1991, and in 1997 his widow sold the property to Paul Langridge, whose executors sold it again in 2004.

Bratton Downs (grid reference ST925522) is a 395.8 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wiltshire, England, near the villages of Bratton and Edington, and about 3 miles (5 km) east of the town of Westbury. It was notified in 1971. The designated area consists mainly of chalk grassland, as well as some ancient woodland, and supports a diverse range of native flora and fauna. It overlays notable geological features—principally landforms created by glaciation in the Pleistocene.

Edington is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about 4 miles (6 km) east-northeast of Westbury. The village lies under the north slope of Salisbury Plain and the parish extends south onto the Plain. Its Grade I listed parish church was built for Edington Priory in the 14th century. Tinhead is the former name of the eastern half of present-day Edington, towards Coulston along the B3098 Westbury to Market Lavington road. Tinhead is labelled on the Ordnance Survey map of 1945 but not on the 1958 map. Today the combined settlement is Edington and the name survives only in Tinhead Hill and Tinhead Lane.

Edington Priory in Wiltshire, England, was founded by William Edington, the bishop of Winchester, in 1351 in his home village of Edington, about 3+3⁄4 miles (6 km) east of the town of Westbury. The priory church was consecrated in 1361 and continues in use as the parish church of Saint Mary, Saint Katharine and All Saints.

At the Battle of Edington, an army of the kingdom of Wessex under Alfred the Great defeated the Great Heathen Army led by the Dane Guthrum on a date between 6 and 12 May 878, resulting in the Treaty of Wedmore later the same year. Primary sources locate the battle at "Eðandun". Until a scholarly consensus linked the battle site with the present-day village of Edington in Wiltshire, it was known as the Battle of Ethandun. This name continues to be used.

Bratton Castle (also known as Bratton Camp) is a bivallate (two ramparts) Iron Age built hill fort on Bratton Down, at the western edge of the Salisbury Plain escarpment. The hill fort comprises two circuits of ditch and bank which together enclose a pentagonal area of 9.3 hectares (23 acres).The Westbury White Horse, a hill figure first documented in 1742, lies on the west side of the hill fort.

Westbury or Bratton White Horse is a hill figure on the escarpment of Salisbury Plain, approximately 1.5 mi (2.4 km) east of Westbury in Wiltshire, England. Located on the edge of Bratton Downs and lying just below an Iron Age hill fort, it is the oldest of several white horses carved in Wiltshire. It was restored in 1778, an action which may have obliterated another horse that had occupied the same slope. A contemporary engraving from around 1772 appears to show a horse facing in the opposite direction that was rather smaller than the present figure. There is, however, no documentation or other evidence for the existence of a chalk horse at Westbury before 1772. The horse is 180 ft (55 m) tall and 170 ft (52 m) wide and has been adopted as a symbol for the town of Westbury, appearing on welcome signs and the logo of its tourist information centre. It is also considered a symbol for Wiltshire as a whole.

Steeple Ashton is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Trowbridge. In the north of the parish are the hamlets of Ashton Common and Bullenhill.

Royal Air Force Station Keevil or more simply RAF Keevil is a former Royal Air Force station located between the villages of Keevil and Steeple Ashton, about 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the town of Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England. The airfield was built on a site previously ear-marked for the purpose in the mid-1930s. With three long concrete runways, the airfield was used by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces Eighth and Ninth Air Forces. Although no longer a RAF station and now known as Keevil Airfield, it is maintained for military use and used for training purposes, predominantly by aircraft from RAF Brize Norton and Joint Helicopter Command.

Whorwellsdown was a hundred of the English county of Wiltshire, lying in the west of the county to the south of the towns of Bradford on Avon and Melksham and to the north and east of Westbury. An arm of the hundred reached several miles southwards into Salisbury Plain, with a detached portion, a tithing of Tilshead, lying high on the Plain about five miles east of the southern arm of the rest of the hundred. At its western end, it reached as far as the Somerset county boundary.

Rood Ashton House was a country house in Wiltshire, England, standing in parkland 0.5 miles (0.80 km) northeast of the village of West Ashton, near Trowbridge. Built in 1808 for Richard Godolphin Long, it was later the home of the 1st Viscount Long (1854–1924).