Clarendon Park, Wiltshire

Historical Description

Clarendon Park, a liberty in Wiltshire, 3 miles ESE of Salisbury. Acreage, 4432; population, 244. This tract was anciently a royal forest, and contained a hunting-seat or palace of the Kings from Henry I. to Edward III. The palace was the meeting-place of the great council in 1164 which enacted the Constitutions of Clarendon against papal aggression; it was a favourite residence of King John; it attained high magnificence in the time of Henry III.; and it was the place where Philip of Navarre did homage to Edward III. as King of France. Only a fragment of it, propped by buttresses, now remains. The forest was given in the 14th century for a term of years to the first Earl of Pembroke; was mortgaged by Charles I.; was granted at the Restoration to Monk, Duke of Albemarle; passed to the Earl of Bath; gave the title of Earl to Chancellor Hyde, the historian of the great Rebellion; and was purchased in 1813 by Benjamin Bathurst, Esq. Clarendon Lodge, the seat of the Bathurst family, is situated about a mile from the fragment of the ancient palace.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Clarendon Park from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Clarendon-Park)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Wiltshire papers online:

• Salisbury and Winchester Journal
• Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette
• Wiltshire Independent
• Swindon Advertiser and North Wilts Chronicle