Colerne

Colerne Church

Colerne, a medium sized village, lies midway between Bath and Chippenham in the county of Wiltshire, England. It has an elevated position (some 550 feet up) and overlooks the Box Valley to the south (home of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Box Tunnel). It is bordered by a section of the famous Roman road, the Fosse Way to the west and by By Brook to the south east.

Colerne had a population of 2,807 in 2001, and is frequently described as The Village on the Hill.^[1]

Placename

The name Colerne appears in the Domesday Book (1086), but over the centuries there have been various interpretations of the name such as Collerne or Cullerne. The Malmesbury Register of 1156 makes reference to Culerna or Culerne. Local pronunciation leans towards the cul form.

This leads to some ambiguity in the meaning of Colerne. Gover, Mawer and Stenton talk of about the aern meaning house in their 1939 publication The Place Names of Wiltshire. They say col-aern might well denote a house where charcoal was made, used or stored.

The altitude of the village lends credence to the idea that the first syllable col is derived from the Welsh or Cornish col - a peak. This is discussed in John C. Langstaff's 1911 publication Notes on Wiltshire Names. This would mean the dwelling on the peak. Alternatively it could mean the cold dwelling from the Anglo-Saxon cald or cold.

Local government

Colerne civil parish is administered by a parish council, North Wiltshire District Council, and Wiltshire County Council.

Trivia

The clock on the church tower only has 1 hand. There is a similar 1 handed clock on Westminster Abbey.
Bristol Rovers training facilities are based in Colerne.
The former RAF Colerne, located nearby, was one of very few airfields suitable for the rare Westland Whirlwind during World War II, operated by No. 263 Squadron RAF.

Notable residents

The British actor Derek Fowlds (of Yes Minister fame, and formerly straight man to Basil Brush) is a resident of the village.
The electronic music duo Goldfrapp are former residents of the village.
Former World Cup and current European skeleton Champion Dr Kristan Bromley and his partner, Britain's number one female Skeleton athlete Shelley Rudman, are currently resident in Colerne.

The Colerne Donkey

According to village legend, a Colerne parson in former years owned a donkey to which he was much attached. While the clergyman was away, the unfortunate ass died, and the sexton felt it proper to have the beast buried in consecrated ground. But the undertaker, inexperienced in interring specimens of E. asinus, neglected to dig the grave wide and deep enough, so the donkey was buried feet-up with its hooves sticking out. The parson had the animal reburied when he returned, but the story was already out, and well into the 20th century young men from the nearby villages of Box or Marshfield who were at a loose end needed only visit Colerne and mention the word Donkey sufficiently loudly in order to be rewarded with a violent poop altercation on a moment's notice. It was also the habit for visiting footballers unacquainted with Colerne history to be dispatched to the home dressing room with a piece of sandpaper and instructions to ask to polish the donkey's hooves. This usually resulted in the erstwhile innocent becoming sadder and wiser in short order.