Honey Garston and the Fry Family

Honey Garston, Calne

A random conversation recently about Calne revealed the fact that there used to be an area of the town called ‘Honey Garston’. This area was either side of the Oxford Road (the road from Calne to Hilmarton and Lyneham); on the image showing Calne in the 1840s, the fields either side of the road, numbered 320-321 and 356-363, were the area known as Honey Garston. The name is remembered by a single street called Honey Garston on the south east side of the Oxford Road, roughly where field 360 used to be.

Calne; 1840s

The significance for Sutton Benger is that much of this area was owned by descendants of Zephaniah Fry (1658-1724). He was the father of, amongst others, John Fry (1701-1775) who built the house which is now La Flambé. And John’s son, Joseph Fry (1728-1787) went on to found Fry’s Chocolate in Bristol. Meanwhile, another son of Zephaniah was Richard (1694-1772); and his daughter Katherine (1736-1804) married William Gundry. The Gundry family was quite wealthy and owned significant landholdings in Calne, including parts of Honey Garston to the north-west of the Oxford Road as well as land around the castle area in the centre of the town. This land is shown on the 1840s map as the property of ‘the Executors of Joseph Fry Gundry’; he was the son of William Gundry and Katherine Fry.

Part of the Fry Family Tree

With thanks and acknowledgements to Tim Havenith and his book Calne Place Names for the following.

Honey Garston was originally a common meadow; it appears on a 1649 map as 'hunnygarston' and was then about 28 acres. The meadow was not divided up into individual fields until 1808. Although the name 'honey' might suggest that the fields grew crops which attracted bees and that there were a number of hives, the more likely reason for such a name is that this area comprised a very sticky soil of clay and mudstone. The word 'garston' probably comes from Anglo-Saxon gaerston, meaning grass enclosure.