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Chilbolton Common can be reached via a footpath
leading from the village and also by going over River Test from
Wherwell. This area of land has never been tilled nor has there been any
chemicals use on it and many of the wild flowers that can be seen on its
banks have grown naturally, especially the chalk loving ones such
as fairy flax and over 110 different types have been found here
including plants that willnot normally tolerate chalk.
The name Chilbolton has changed over the centuries from Ceolbaldinctura in Saxon times, and in AD909 it was called Ceolboldington, the Domesday Book had it registered as Cilbodentune. and then in the reign of Richard 1st it was Chiblondinton. Chilbolton did not have electricity until 1933 and the villagers were said to have been frightened by the thought of them being blown up! Eventually they were persuaded that it would benefit them, especially as free fittings and lights were going to be thrown in as well! They were not daft these villagers!! A rather strange custom is held every year in the village, the making and baking of mid-Lent wafers, nobody is sure where this came from but it is said that it was from before the Reformation. The wafers were baked in a pair of special tongs that had the letters 'I.S' carved on one half and a pattern on the other so when baked this would be transferred to the wafers themselves Most of the roads in the village are constructed on old tracks laid back in Saxon times and a lot of the houses in the village street are also on Saxon foundations. The village was probably first settled next to a spring, maybe where the pumping station is adjoining the Abbots Mitre.
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THE CHILBOLTON GHOST It is said that the Rectory has its own ghostlyl nun who is said to be Katherin Faulkner, who fled the Abbey at nearby Wherwell in 1393, and seven years later she returned there but her escape did not go unpunished and she was bricked up alive in the nunnery. The present day Rectory was constructed on the site of the old nunnery and this is said to account for the figure of a woman appearing at a window begging for help CHILBOLTON AT WAR Eleanor M. Lockyer has included a great deal on the airfield in her books 'English Airfields 1941-1945' and her follow up 'English Airfields 1945 - 62' both of these books can be purchased from the village shop or at the Army Air Force Museum at Middle Wallop. CHILBOLTON AT WAR CHILBOLTON VILLAGE WEBSITE ST MARY'S CHURCH
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