Box People and Places
Latest Issue 47 Spring 2025 
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Swinging Sixties - 1950s & 1960s     Issue 2: April 2014

This is a website for people who are interested in the history of Box, in the county of Wiltshire, and its surrounding hamlets. The site publishes articles about the characters who lived here and how the village developed. It is also a community website where you can record your story and that of your ancestors. Click on the blue headings below to read the articles.
Feature Article: Shops in Box Sixty Years Ago
These premises were a garage, doctor's surgery, butchers, barbers, newsagents and fish and chip shop in the 1950s.
But which was which?
Read Shops in Box to find the about the 20 shops that once existed in the centre of the village.
PictureBox's first and only pop group The Four Specs
People
Kevin Ford, who lives in Ashley tells about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in Teenage Rebels
. Kevin recalls The Four Specs pop group; run-ins with PC John Botley; and seeing Prince Monolulu at Monkton Farleigh point-to-point races.

Your help is needed ! Jane Cox has challenged readers to discover Bartholomew Bigod
. Or would you care to help research the Northey Family of Box?

Thanks to everyone who wrote in about Issue 1. There are readers updates on the Blog tab abouy More Maisie Gay.

Please let us have your thoughts and photos on any of the articles.

Places

PictureBurlington Bunker (c Jason Orton)
We recount the amazing story of the Nuclear Threat at Rudloe that threatened the whole area in the 1960s. We are also delighted to be allowed to show landscape photographer Jason Orton's pictures of Burlington Bunker.

Do you know about the Battle of Kingsdown Common in 1948
when one man took on the might of the Golf Club to claim his common land rights? Or read about the search for prehistoric Standing Stones at Kingsdown.

Paul Bazell asked about the story of Ashley Green. We also tell the story of Mills Platt, More Old Jockey, Drilley Bottom and the Jubilee Centre.



PictureWe Will Never Forget Them
Box During World War 1
We are commemorating the impact of The Great War on Box in a series of articles.
Home and Far Away tells the effect on villagers of the deaths of their sons, husbands, fathers and friends. It is a very moving story.

Finding Private Hall recalls
Carole French's search to discover more about an ordinary Box soldier killed in the Great War. Readers are already leaving moving tributes to Box's young soldiers in the article In Memoriam
.

There's lots more planned including an exhibition of World War 1 items. Can you provide WW1 stories of soldiers, pictures or items to remember them by?


PicturePhoto CMP
Next Issue
In July we feature articles about Box's blacksmith shop (right) on the edge of Box's housing area and how the Fire Brigade operated in the village.

As the centenary
of 4th August 1914 approaches, we record a moving tribute to every one of Box's soldiers who died in the Great War. We also hope to include articles from Box School children of their researches in the school logbook and First World War letters and diaries.

Do you have a story to tell about Box in the past? If so, please get in touch and don't forget to sign up for our free quarterly newsletter.