Museum St Mary's Church, South Tidworth

The village of South Tidworth was noteworthy in history as originally King Harold (leader of the English Army in the Battle of Hastings) was the first lord of the manor. There were three manors in the village and thatched cottages which were the homes of the servants of the manors.

This land was changed into Tedworth estate (another way of pronouncing ‘Tidworth’). The Tedworth estate was a famous sporting estate and was lastly owned by Sir John Kelk and his wife Rebecca in 1870’s. On the estate there had previously been a medieval church which had fallen into disrepair in 1784 and the new owner of the manor thought it was too close to their home, so stones from the medieval church were used to build an alternative parish church further away, at the top of the existing Church lane.

When the new St. Mary’s was built in 1878 by Kelk the former smaller church was retained as the Mortuary Chapel and used for burials. This contains many of the memorials from the previous building.   St. Mary the Virgins’  architecture has inspiration  from the thirteenth century but was designed with a mid-Victorian style. Unfortunately, fast-forwarding  to 1972 and due to dwindling congregation sizes the church was taken out of active use by the Church of England and declared redundant when it separated from Shipton Bellinger (Hampshire) in the Winchester diocese. It then joined the Salisbury diocese. Finally, in 1973 it was vested in the Churches Conservation Trust, in whose care it remains today.