Shrewton Village Website: Funded by Shrewton Parish CouncilThe Catherine Wheel:
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Last updated 03-Sep-2005 22.29
A Shrewton Website Photo-Feature

Introduction: The Catherine Wheel pub was, up until the 1980s, the premier pub in Shrewton. The Catherine Wheel site consisted of the main pub building with its trademark L shaped frontage incorporating the veranda - from which lovely baskets of flowers dangled each year - and some additional buildings behind,  notably the "coach house"

The coach house was located at the rear of the main car park. The upstairs part of this was sometimes used as a function room and Shrewton Silver Band are known to have used this room for band practice sessions up until at least the 1940s. The ground floor of the coach house was latterly used as a garage, and presumably - given the name of the building - at some stage in the past, the building held coaches of visitors to the inn and their horses too.

By January 1999 the pub was boarded up and deserted and stood awaiting its fate for almost two years, as shown in our picture, dating from November 1999.

How Old?: Actually, nobody seems to be quite sure when the original Catherine Wheel inn was built. From the layout and facilities it seems to have provided, we might infer that the Catherine Wheel was once Shrewton's premier coaching inn. In pre-railway days such inns were to be found at regular intervals along coaching routes, the routes taken by stage coaches, the forerunner of modern buses. Coaching inns provided a fresh team of horses for the coach and - of course - quick (and apparently highly priced!) drinks all round for the passengers before resuming their journey. However, this romantic image of the Catherine Wheel may be mistaken.

There is evidence that at least some of the Salisbury to Devizes stage coaches took the road up past Rollestone Camp and the Bustard inn, this was long before the army came to the plain. This would have meant that the Catherine Wheel might not have seen very many coaches. The A360 through Shrewton, Tilshead and Lavington is now the obvious route from Salisbury to Devizes, but that was not always the case. If you follow the road past the Bustard and continue straight out onto the plain, you eventually come (after about 7 miles) to the Devizes to Upavon road (the A342) somewhere near Chirton. So, in pre-army days this may have been an alternative (or even preferred) road - certainly as a route to Devizes it is about the same distance as the A360 road we use now. Nowadays, the plain road is very rough and dangerous, and anyway it is often out of bounds to the public. Readers are not advised to try this route for themselves on their next shopping trip to Devizes!

A few years ago, Dennis Compton came across an old auction sheet for the Catherine Wheel, dated 13th May 1890 (we reproduce the first page of this document here) and has kindly contributed it to the Shrewton Archive. Among other things, this document tells us that the pub then belonged to Joseph Goddard Parsons who had died in 1886. The pub was being sold at the order of Mr Justice Stirling of the Chancery division in London. Could this mean that Joseph Parsons had died without leaving a will, or perhaps had died a bankrupt? The reference to "Parsons vs Parsons" may point to a disputed legacy between heirs? In any case, by 1890 the court had instructed John Wooley of Salisbury (very likely a forerunner of the current Salisbury auction house Wooley and Wallace - established 1884) to auction the property - no, sorry, we have not been able to find out how much the buyer paid!

We believe that Joseph Parsons was - at the time of his death - patriarch of the Parsons family who kept the farm on land behind The Catherine Wheel site - what is now Parsons Green. The house site at the right of the entrance to Parsons Green was - in Joseph's day - the farmhouse. 

The large car park that is evident in the 1999 pictures was partly created by clearing a small row of houses that stood there  - probably up until the 1930s(?). Several postcards in Harry Withers' collection show crowds of people cheering outside these homes as soldiers marched off to the 1914-1918 war. Shrewton old-timer Geoff Young was born in one of these cottages. Geoff now lives in Salisbury, but for many years he ran Young's Transport from the site on which "The Butts" now stands.

When the houses adjacent to the Catherine Wheel were demolished (we think in the 1930s), their place was taken by a larger car park and around about this time the village got a part-time branch of Lloyds Bank (Yes, before widespread car ownership, some villages used to have their very own bank branches!). First of all, this bank was set up in an add-on to the houses behind the Catherine Wheel site. Then, probably in the 1940s, a the bank was relocated into a new square structure that stood almost opposite the Roundhouse. From this building the bank operated on an ever more part time basis until the late 1980s when it was closed down completely. Presently, it reopened as a bric-a-brac and antiques shop - see the next two pictures showing this in operation in August & November 1999 respectively.

Throughout most of the 20th Century, the Catherine Wheel was at the centre of village life in one way or another. Our next picture shows it in full glory in the 1970s. Older readers will recognise the Watney's Red Barrel symbol hanging over the pub sign.

It's not hard to find stories from local people of good times and bad times had at the pub. Celebrations held there, fights between off-duty soldiers and local lads - there are lots of stories. Clearly, the pub was a major beneficiary of passing trade to and from Salisbury and Stonehenge - and was the location for meetings and events of various kinds. There are photographs of car enthusiasts meeting there, charabanc outings using the pub as a starting point, bandsmen lining up outside the pub for a photo - and many more events centred on the site. Good times continued for the Catherine Wheel, right up until the 1980s, but things then started to go downhill.

It is said by some that the shift in focus in the pub trade from drink to food - which started in the 1980s and has carried on to the current day - was the downfall of the Catherine Wheel. Other pubs in the village made a swift transition to serving hot meals alongside the drinks, but the Catherine Wheel lagged behind, and lost custom because of it. Numerous changes of ownership and management during the 1990s failed to restore its former glory and by now was in need of expensive structural repairs - hardly an attractive proposition for prospective new landlords.

By the late 1990s all attempts to keep the pub going had failed and - as the next picture shows (another picture from our November 1999 set) - the pub was awaiting new ownership, having stood empty and boarded-up for almost two years - a daily reminder of how changing times and tastes can change the fortunes of some of the most iconic buildings in a village.

Conversion - A New Chapter: During the week commencing 2nd October 2000 the contracted building firm, Rivar Builders, started work on converting the Catherine Wheel into a number of domestic dwellings. Sadness in the village was tinged with relief that work had finally started to rejuvenate the decrepit site in central Shrewton which had, by then, become something of an embarrassment to the village.

Rivar setup their site office in the old pub and things started happening!

The coach house at the back of the car park was torn down. The old bank building which had, since the early 1990s, been used as an antiques and bric-a-brac shop was demolished and the foundations of a house took its place. The following picture sequence (taken in October and November 2000) shows these tasks in progress.

(above) The old coach house - viewed from the south side -  being demolished on 2nd October 2000

and the same scene, this time looking from south-east, out towards the old bank and the roundhouse.

The Antiques Bank - less its roof.

The Antiques Bank: Gone! (November 2000) Foundations for a new house now in place.

Looking along the frontage of the Catherine Wheel towards where the Coach House used to be.

And then... It was now: So, during the millennium year, the Catherine Wheel pub became Catherine Court - a set of private residences. New people came into the village to live in them and to join the local community and the long history of the site started a new phase.

This has been a Shrewton Website Photo Feature.

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