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| When I was at school we all belonged to certain
"houses" I was at Longleat and the others were Blenheim, Wilton and
Braemore. I always wondered where these were situated though Longleat I
knew from childhood memories of the Lions of Longleat, Wilton I knew was
near Salisbury and later discovered that Blenheim was just outside of
Oxford, but never knew where Braemore was till I was much older! In fact I found it while delivering bread on the main Salisbury to Fordingbridge road. I had to pull into the local shop there and over the hedge I could see the tower to St Mary's church and parts of Braemore House. I just had to return and spend a day there. It is here where the Wilshire border joins Hampshire that the Wiltshire Avon flows graceful across the flood plain and at Braemore there is an 18th century mill and a bridge of three arches spanning this magnificent and famous trout river.
A little way upstream from the mill was St Michael's Priory (dissolved in 1536)to which access was to be found via the footpath across the now disused railway junction. There are three stone coffins on what was the burial ground of the priory but no-one knows their age. Beside the road there used to be the village stocks and were once a very common site in most towns and villages. There is a cottage nearby whose name I forgot but it had three fire insurance marks on its walls one for the Norwich and the Sun but the other has since been worn away by the weather. The nearest fire brigade was in Salisbury so the cottage would have burnt down long before they got there!! There is a lot of marshland around here an by Upper Street is Braemore Marsh that is crisscrossed with paths and local people think that it was probably a manorial green. On the Braemore Down there is a turf maze and is one of only two in Hampshire and dates back to Mediaeval times. In Europe stone or tile mazes were quite common as well as labyrinths. The Braemore maze is unusual again in that it is circular and is similar to those in Chantres Cathedral and also in the abbey at Bayeux.
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