The Duke Inn Holiday Chalet
The Duke Inn Holiday Chalet


“There used to be a lady who came into church in her sou'wester and long coat”. It's the early 1950s and a young girl is puzzled. “I remember asking my Mum why that lady left her Wellie boots in the porch. She said 'She's staying in the woods'. I thought she lived there.”

Perched on the hillside high above the Church once stood an annexe for the Duke Inn. The view it offered over the village and down to the railway line was described by one postcard correspondent as “magnificent”. Photographs of groups stood out front from a time when they wore Edwardian fashion offer an indication of the bungalow's age.

In her memoirs Marjorie Reeves recalls that in the 1920s “One year a group of Oxford students took the bungalow on the hill-side opposite us for a reading party and came across the valley in the evening to play tennis.” Others remember parties of teachers staying throughout the summer holidaying, groups of Boy Scouts, and even war evacuees.

The two storied wooden building offered a living room and small kitchen on the ground floor, with a veranda for deckchairs. A wooden hut to one side housed the toilet. The bedroom was on the upper floor, with three bunk beds down either side. People recall how, as children, it was considered a great novelty at bedtime to go out of the living room onto the veranda and climb the open stair case to bed.

Water supplies had to be fetched from the nearby Church Spring and stored in stone jars to keep it cool, while food and other supplies were carried from the village.

Its owners have included the Flook sisters, Mr Linham, and finally Mr Grant, who had to make the decision to demolish the bungalow some time in the early 1960s due to its deterioration. Its weathered concrete plinth is all that remains today.




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Bratton History Association.

The Bratton History Association aims to provide all those curious about local history with an opportunity to meet, exchange ideas, and discover more about the history of Bratton and Wiltshire. Activities include monthly meetings, talks by professional historians, visits to places of interest to historians, and our own local history project.

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