Scotland Lodge

With thanks to Nesta Heath; see her Life and Herbing in Sutton Benger; Memories of a Wiltshire Village. See also Tim Couzens: Hand of Fate: The History of the Longs, Wellesleys and the Draycot Estate in Wiltshire.

A number of Lodges were built or refurbished around Draycot Park in the 1800s.

Scotland Lodge, on the road from Stanton to Seagry, south of Nabal's Farm and west of Harding's Farm, was rebuilt in 1862. It has two crests under the gables, with very clear dates. A previous house on the same site can be seen on the 1839 Tithe map, close to a large field known as 'Hill near Scotland'. It is identified as 'Keeper's house and garden' but there is no name given for the gamekeeper.

Nesta Heath remembered life in Draycot Cerne and Sutton Benger as a child in the 1920s / 1930s. ‘Old Bolton … the game-keeper. He really did frighten us as he always crept about with a bag on his shoulder and a gun under his arm. He was dressed in a game-keeper’s suit which was the same colour as a tree trunk, with knee breeches and gaiters. He was very cunning, but his job really made him like that. He lived at Scotland Lodge on the estate. At the back of this he had lines of dead vermin hanging out: crows, magpies, weasels, stoats, foxes, and anything else he had shot or snared. Of course, there were lots of pheasants that had to be reared for the shooting season.’ (Nesta Heath, Life and Herbing, pp. 17-18).

There was a major change in parish boundaries when the M4 arrived, and Scotland Lodge is now in the parish of Seagry.