Key facts
OS grid ref: ST968399
Postcode: BA12
Post town: Warminster
What3words: ///beakers.totals.deliver
Unitary Authority: Wiltshire
Parliamentary Constituency: South West Wiltshire
Codford
Codford is a pretty village, with thatched cottages that sits in stunning landscapes in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (National Landscape), including Codford St Peter and Codford St Mary. It’s timeless.
The village is on the A36 close to Salisbury Plain, about seven miles from Warminster, a drive of less than 10 minutes. It’s also around 30 minutes from the cathedral city of Salisbury with its shops, restaurants, bars, heritage, culture and transport links including the train to London which takes less than 90 minutes.
There’s a pre-school nursery and a primary school, St Mary’s CE as well as a GP surgery, village shop and Post Office.
The locals are, quite rightly, proud of their village hall with its Broadleaze Fields. It has a licensed bar and hosts lots of events through the year, including a village fete, Christmas celebrations, regular ploughman’s lunches that support local community groups and artisan markets to support local small businesses. There’s even an amateur theatre company that puts on plays at the Woolstore Theatre in the High Street building, formerly part of a 19th Century wool store.
The village has a long history with Anzac soldiers from WWI when transit and training camps were built for tens of thousands troops waiting to be deployed to France. There’s a chalk hill carving on Lamb Down of the Anzac Badge – a giant sun. Nearby is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery and the Codford villagers still hold a remembrance ceremony each year at 6:30am on 25 April, Anzac Day.
History
Codford Circle on Codford Hill is believed to be a Neolithic hillfort, also known as Wilsbury Ring. There’s also Woldsbury and Oldbury Camp and to the north Bronze Age barrows.
The Domesday Book records Codford as a settlement of 28 households, which made it one of the larger settlements of the time.
There are two Grade II listed historic churches less than half a mile from each other, St Peter’s and St Mary’s.
In more recent years, Codford and the area around, has a long history with New Zealand’s Anzac soldiers, marked by a huge carving at Lamb Down in the shape of a sun of the Anzac Badge.
In WWI, vast training and transfer camps were built for tens of thousands troops waiting for deployment to the front line in France, and in 1916, it took injured soldiers brought back from the front line.
Nearby is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery where 97 Anzac soldiers, 66 New Zealanders, and 31 Australians, alongside one Welsh Guardsman from WWII are buried.
The Codford villagers hold a remembrance ceremony each year at 6:30am on April 25, Anzac Day.
Walking and cycling
The area surrounding Codford is stunning.
If you’d like to explore it on foot, here’s a circular walk from ‘Things Helen Loves’ with an evocative narrative which originally came from Alltrails.
