Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire

A Spaniard in the works

I recently spent a day bumbling around Warwickshire wondering if I could see the wonderful country house at Compton Wynyates from the public roads or public footpaths that surround it. Years ago this house was open to the public and I remember being enchanted by its forest of raspberry brick Tudor chimneys, Gothic windows, and gables. I seem to remember that the house could be seen from the nearby road, but its owners, who no longer open their home, now guard their privacy with trees, putting a spanner in my works.

So I had to be content, for now at least, with some interesting neighbouring structures, such as Compton Pike. My first sight of this curious landscape feature was a glimpse of the very top just beyond the crest of a hill. Walking along the edge of the field reveals an elongated pyramid of local ironstone, topped with a ball finial.

Compton Pike was probably put up in the 16th century as a signalling beacon – an iron hook protruded from the finial, and this supported a flaming lantern. It may have been used in 1588 as part of the chain of beacons that warned of the arrival of the Spanish Armada. It has remained ever since as a landmark and an obstacle to farm workers with combine harvesters, one of whom was about to negotiate it when I took this picture before bumbling on with my search.

Purton, Wiltshire

ARCHITEXTS: THINGS WRITTEN ON BUILDINGS (7)
Hexagonal or octagonal buildings often started life as the dwellings of the people responsible for collecting tolls on the turnpike roads of the 18th and 19th centuries – that’s why they’re often referred to as pike houses. They are this peculiar shape for a reason – having sides facing different ways meant that the toll-collector could easily see people coming along the road from more than one direction, and could be ready to leap out and collect the appropriate dues before a traveller slipped swiftly by in his gig or chaise.

By the year 1800 there were around 23,000 miles of turnpike road in England controlled by more than 1,000 separate local turnpike trusts. There are still lots of their former pike houses dotted all over the country. But not many of these survivors bear their old toll boards, listing the fees charged to different kinds of traffic, wheeled and/or hoofed. Tenpence for a score of oxen, fourpence halfpenny for a coach, and so on. This signboard is on a polygonal pike house in Purton, Wiltshire, that was built in the early-19th century by the Swindon, Calne and Cricklade Turnpike Trust. Its occupant would have collected tolls from traffic travelling between Cricklade and Wootton Bassett. It’s good to know that both house and signboard are still there, even though a man doesn’t pop out and demand fourpence halfpenny as one passes.