Regrettably this seems to change from a nice little symbol on the 1880s maps to a ‘site of’ so I’m guessing there’s nothing to see, or virtually nothing. But I’m hoping you will indulge this little insight into how people saw barrows. An intersection of ancient tracks and parish boundaries sounds like a good liminal spot to me.
Oram’s Grave (Chitterne St. Mary).
At the intersection of the old track from Salisbury to Warminster across the Downs, with that from Maddington to Codford St Mary, on the boundary line of Maddington and Chitterne St Mary, is a barrow marked “Oram’s Grave” on the Ordnance 6in. Map. The Bishop, on his visit to us (23 March 1893), pointed out this name to me, of which I was previously ignorant, and suggested that it was the corruption of some British or Saxon name, which I doubted. Afterwards, on looking at the map, it occurred to me that as the grave was situated at the cross roads, Oram was probably the name of a suicide, buried there according to the old custom and law.
A conversation with widow Sarah Cook (aged 81) on 28 March 1893, proved that this was the case. She told me that in 1849 she and her husband were living in one of the Maddington Down Barn Cottages, and in the other the shepherd lived, James White and his wife Elizabeth (formerly Windsor), a very good woman, aged 61, both of Chitterne. Elizabeth White told Sarah Cook that when she was a child she was coming home with her father from Salisbury (or elsewhere) and when they were near the crossways by the Clump, they saw many people coming from Chitterne to bury Oram in the barrow there, for he had hung himself with his own rope, and was to be buried there. Her father told her that “her maunt be vraughten at what she saw for they wouldn’t hurt she,” and so she saw Oram buried. She did not tell Sarah Cook whether his body was in a coffin or not, but Sarah Cook thinks there was a coffin; certainly there was no parson and no service. The barrow has ever afterwards been called “Oram’s Grave,” and the name is now perpetuated in the Ordnance Survey.
8 May 1893. – The Rev. A.C. Pinhorn, Vicar of Chitterne, told me the circumstances of Oram’s burial are forgotten in Chitterne, except that the cause of his suicide was disappointment in love, and that a stake was driven through the body, which I think proves that though he may have been carried to the grave in a coffin, he was not buried in one. There is no record of the funeral in the Register, nor any charge for it in the parish accounts.
Fredk. Bennett.
Who knows. From Wiltshire Notes and Queries, vol III (1899-1901).
