_The Residence of the Honourable Louis Greville_; _bought by him from Sir
E. Loder_, 1894.
This house, beautifully built of small red bricks, has stone-coped
windows in the Dutch style of architecture introduced into this country
by William III., and is quite unlike the usual stone and flint
“chequered” houses of the neighbourhood. You enter the grounds through
old wrought-iron gates and down an avenue of elm-trees. The river Avon
flows through the garden. This property formerly belonged to the
Errington and Hyde families. Inside the house little remains of the old
decorations but some carved woodwork. A cupboard in a bedroom is shown
as the hiding-place of Charles II. after the battle of Worcester. He is
said to have visited Stonehenge from Heale, and there met friends who
were to conduct him to the coast of Sussex prior to his escape from
England. He is supposed to have proved to his own satisfaction the
fallacy of the notion of the impossibility of counting the stones
composing Stonehenge.
“In 1721 Robert Hyde bequeathed Heale to his sister, Mrs. Levinz, widow
of the Bishop of Sodor and Man, and she, by will, devised the estates to
her son-in-law, Michael Frampton of Oxford, and he, in his turn, left
them to his nephews, Thomas Bull, rector of Porton, and Edward and Simon
Polhill and their heirs in succession, in default thereof to William
Bowles; in seventeen years after the death of the testator, Canon Bowles
was in full possession of the property.” Several members of the Bowles
family lie buried in Salisbury Cathedral. Heale Hill is remarkable for a
circle on the summit and traces of a British village on the south slope.
[Picture: Little Durnford]