Shalbourne

Shalbourne is a civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire, about 3mi southwest of Hungerford, Berkshire. Besides a village of the same name, the parish has a number of widely spaced small settlements including Bagshot and Stype, to the north, and Rivar and Oxenwood to the south. Before 1895, about half of the parish of Shalbourne (including its church) lay in Berkshire.Local governmentThe civil parish elects a parish council. It is in the area of Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for all significant local government functions.AmenitiesShalbourne has a primary school and a village hall which was built in 1843 as a schoolroom.Notable people From 1608 until late 1637, tenants of the parish's Westcourt Manor included William Carpenter and his namesake son, both of whom emigrated to Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1638 on the Bevis from Southampton. The younger William Carpenter was a founder of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The Rehoboth Carpenter family's descendants number in the tens of thousands, among whom are two U.S. presidents and a Project Mercury astronaut. William Carpenter married at Shalbourne in 1625 Abigail Briant, whose family had resided in the parish since at least the late 16th century. Jethro Tull, agricultural pioneer, owned a farm in the parish.