Harnham
| Harnham | |
|---|---|
 All Saints Church, East Harnham |
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 View across the water meadows from Harnham's lower part |
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 Harnham
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| Harnham shown within Wiltshire | |
| Population | 7,300 |
| OS grid reference | SU 1427628 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Salisbury |
| Postcode district | SP2 |
| Police | Wiltshire |
| Fire | Dorset and Wiltshire |
| Ambulance | South Western |
| EU Parliament | South West England |
| UK Parliament | |
Harnham is a suburb of the City of Salisbury in Wiltshire, centred about 0.6 miles (1 km) south of Salisbury Cathedral and across the River Avon.
Harnham has had some form of human habitation in the area since the Iron Age, a settlement is marked in ordnance survey map underneath several modern houses in Harnwood Road/Old Blandford Road, a straight Roman Road.
Until the 19th century formation of urban and rural districts, the area lay within the Cawdon and Cawsworth Hundred of Wiltshire. Harnham appears in the 1086 Domesday Book.
The road and traffic backlog in the city was improved in 1244 by the building of Ayleswade bridge leading traffic also in from the south through Harnham, thus traffic was diverted from the older route westward through Wilton.
In 1848, Samuel Lewis (publisher) desrcibed the settlement in a topographical dictionary based partly on 1841 census statistics:
Harnham consists of two wards: West and East Harnham, which in 2011 had a combined population of around 7,300 West Harnham, formerly a countrified civil parish next to New Salisbury was absorbed into the administration of one civil parish of Salisbury following the lead of East Harnham in 1903, itself joining the city of Salisbury in 1927 at the same time as parts of Laverstock, Stratford and Bemerton.
Harnham lies to the south of Salisbury and is linked to the city by road via the Ayleswade Bridge in East Harnham, originally built across the Avon in 1244, and by foot via the Town Path across the "historic and important landscape" of the Harnham Water Meadows in West Harnham. The meadows lie between two branches of the River Nadder and extend into the outskirts of the city itself. They are part of an extensive irrigation system of floated water meadows, dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Now a Site of Special Scientific Interest (see East Harnham Meadows) they are still used for grazing and were voted the Best View in Britain by Country Life magazine in 2002. The meadows were made famous in John Constable's painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral - A View from the Water Meadow’. The meadows are managed by the Harnham Water Meadows Trust [1] and owned by the Trust jointly with the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral.
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Wikipedia