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Little Bedwyn Parish

Little Bedwyn is a small village and civil parish on the River Dun in north-east Wiltshire, England, about 3 miles south-west of the market town of Hungerford in neighbouring Berkshire. The parish includes the hamlet of Chisbury. The village is served by trains from Great Bedwyn, for London and the West. Little Bedwyn Parish Council covers the villages of both Little Bedwyn and Chisbury.

In the heart of some stunning countryside, we are close to Hungerford, Marlborough, Savernake Forest and Salisbury Plain. Anciently the whole parish was within Savernake Forest, but after a redrawing of the forest's boundaries in 1330 only the western part remained in it. 

Little Bedwyn sits in a gentle valley drained by the River Dun, alongside which travels the Kennet and Avon Canal. The area is part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and there are a number of Conservation Areas across the Parish. 

The Church of England parish church of St. Michael at Little Bedwyn is at the north end of the village. It was built in the 12th or 13th century, although the tall and narrow nave has the proportions of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church. The oldest parts are the three-bay north and south arcades, from the late 12th century and early 13th respectively, although their carved details were restored in the 19th century. The four bells in the tower were augmented by a fifth in 2014. The oldest two are from the 17th century. 

At 176 metres above sea level, Chisbury hillfort is the highest point in Little Bedwyn parish. Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts have been found in the area, but the hillfort was most probably built in the late Iron Age in the 1st century AD. The hillfort was re-used in the Anglo-Saxon times as a burh.

Within the camp is the former St Martin's Chapel, a Decorated Gothic building of flint, now a farm building. Bedwyn Dyke, an early medieval fortification with similarities to the Wansdyke, stretches some 1.5 miles south-east from the hillfort.

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