Tisbury & Area in postcards 1
 Tisbury in postcards . . . . . Above the High Street The Bennet recently finished Pennyfarthings Estate Agents to the left edge Newsagents with original frontage |
 Posted 1909 Florist Shop before frontage was removed |
 1916 |
 1930 same idea just motorised |
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The small town of Tisbury lies approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of Salisbury in the county of Wiltshire. With a population at the 2001 census of 2,056 it is an important local centre for communities around the Nadder Valley & Vale of Wardour. It is the largest settlement within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (larger towns such as Salisbury and Shaftesbury are just outside the area).
This town has a little historical significance. There is evidence of Bronze Age settlement and traces of a probable henge monument with some evidence of settlement 3-4000 years ago. To the southeast of the town there is a quite large hill fort, known as Castle Ditches.The first written evidence of settlement was in Saxon (400-1066 A.D) times as a fortress site ( burgh/bury being a fortified town ) to defend the area against the Danes who were slowly encroaching from the east and north. There was a large important monastery in the village but this was possible destroyed by the Vikings but the name remained as Tisbury-Minster until Medieval times
The Saxon settlement came into the possession of Shaftesbury Abbey across the border into Dorset, founded by Alfred the Great for his daughter Æthelgifu. The administration centre was the monastic grange, called Abbey Grange Place Farm. Its 15th-century thatched tithe barn bears the largest thatched roof in England. The old Wardour Castle lies approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) to the southwest of Tisbury. New Wardour Castle is a private residence
The village's 13th-century prosperity came from the chalk quarries that produced stone for the building of Salisbury Cathedral, and from the wool that supported a local cloth industry with the fulling mill at the end of Fonthill lake. The village suffered a serious setback with the Black Death in the mid-14th century but recovered unlike many deserted Wiltshire villages.
The churchyard of the parish church of St John's holds the graves of Rudyard Kipling's parents who lived at Arundell house (then the vicarage). It also holds the second oldest tree in Great Britain, a large yew tree, which is believed to be around 4,000 years old.