LOCAL HISTORY - KNOOK

Knook is about a mile east of Heytesbury.

Many of the weavers and cloth workers of Heytesbury lived in Knook, the  population in 1831 - 282;  in 1951 - 544.  Today there are about 25 houses and cottages.  There used to be two farms, but today there is only one working farm, the other farm buildings were carefully converted to six houses and the land sold to an adjoining enterprise.  Knook Horse Hill and Knook Down are both in East Farm lands.

The Manor House, on the banks of the river Wylye, between the river and the church, is a Tudor building of stone with gabled ends, gabled porch and stone mullioned windows and, since its restoration, is a very attractive house. This was restored in 1924 by Mary Esther Crichton-Maitland and Margaret Crichton-Maitland.  The two sisters bought Knook Manor and lived there until 1961.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Knook like this:

KNOOK, a parish, with a village, in Warminster district, Wilts; on the river Wiley, the Old Ditch way, and the Somerset and Weymouth railway, 1 mile SE of Heytesbury r. station. Post town, Heytesbury, under Bath. Acres, 1, 440. Real property, £1, 342. Pop., 208. Houses, 46. The property belongs chiefly to Lord Heytesbury. Knook Castle is an ancient single ditched entrenchment, of about 2 acres; is supposed to have been originally a British village, and afterwards a Roman summer camp; and has yielded Roman coins.

Extracted from http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/place_page.jsp?p_id=11859