Manor Farm House

Manor Farm House originally had its own chapel; the village was part of the landholdings of Malmesbury Abbey, and Manor Farm would have been the Abbey 'Grange' - the monastic farm estate. This grange would have included, as well as a chapel, the 'normal' farm buildings such as tithe barns, dairy residential buildings, and so on. There would have been a resident priest, managing the Abbey's estate, as distinct from the Vicar, who was responsible for 'managing' the spiritual needs of the parishioners. The brickwork on the building shows where there used to be a chapel window.

Recent (2025) archaeological surveys of the Manor Farm building have established that some of the wood used in its construction dates back to the 1290s, making it the probably the oldest surviving structure in the village, apart from the church. There is also reference to buildings in Sutton Benger in a document called the 'Malmesbury Cartulary' dating from 1260-1296, when William of Colerne was the Abbot of Malmesbury; however, it cannot be certain that the buildings referred to are still standing today. It is possible the current farmhouse was built onto the chapel, rather than the chapel being added to the farmhouse.

The original document is in Latin.

A translation of the text includes the following:

At Sutton he [William of Colerne] caused a grange to be built with a court to be enclosed with a stone wall and [also caused to be rebuilt] all the houses standing there.

There is an apocryphal story that, during the Civil War in the 1640s when the Roundheads were stationed in the church, soldiers tried to set Manor Farm’s chapel on fire, but they were not successful. However, Malmesbury Abbey had lost the farm during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and it had become part of the estate of the Long family of Draycot Cerne. The chapel had beeen converted to a bedroom before the Civil War, and it was probably at this time that the chapel window was bricked up. Certainly the 1637 Last Will and Testament of Richard Atkins, who leased Manor Farm from the Longs, refers to ‘the chapel chamber’.