metaphysician, a native of the parish and rector from 1704 to 1732, is notable for his Clavis Universalis (1713). As a child of about ten in the 1770s, William Cobbett spent a whole summer in the village, and his happy memories of his stay led him to take one of his 'Rural Rides' into Wiltshire some fifty years later. However, he wrote in 1826 that In June 1795, it was reported that some 120 sheep had been killed at Steeple Langford by a freak hailstorm. The Salisbury to Westbury branch line was built across the parish, bisecting Little Langford and passing close to Hanging Langford. Langford station was opened at the same time as the line, in June 1856, but closed in October 1857. The Warminster to Salisbury road running through Steeple Langford village was designated as the A36 in the 20th century, and became part of the Southampton-Bristol route. The road was rerouted close to the north of the village in 1989. Little Langford parish, which had a population of 64 in 1931, was added to Steeple Langford in 1934. The population of the parish was 501 in 2001, much the same as in 1801, having peaked at 628 in 1861. A detailed history of the parish is contained in Volume XV: Amesbury hundred and Branch and Dole hundred (1995) of A History of the County of Wiltshire. Bathampton Domesday Book recorded two estates under the name Wylye, which were later known as Batham Wylye; the name Bathampton came into use in the 15th century. Two groups of buildings in the west of the parish, each including a manor house, were known as Great Bathampton and Little Bathampton. The former was the seat of the Mompesson family, who built Mompesson House in Salisbury Cathedral Close. They rebuilt the manor house in 1694 in rubble stone and dressed limestone, as a U-shaped building with a seven-bay front. Now called Bathampton House, it is Grade II* listed. Most of the interior is 18th-century, and in a drawing room is a fine white marble fireplace in late-18th Gothick style with elaborate carving, said to have come from Fonthill. At the site of Little Bathampton, the late 17th-century farmhouse is known as Ballington Manor. Hanging Langford Hanging Langford is a street village, probably a planned layout, with houses on both sides of the street having rectangular plots of roughly equal size behind them.