Centuries-old Mystery Solved

Maud Heath’s Causeway runs for more than four miles between Chippenham and Bremhill in North Wiltshire, and 550 years have passed since the trust that bears her name was established to maintain it – in 1474. But nobody has ever been sure who Maud Heath was or why she endowed a causeway. The popular story is that she was a poor market woman who, fed up with struggling through the mud of the Avon floodplain on her way into town, left money for a causeway, so that others could walk ‘dry-shod.’ At Bremhill there is a monument to her, with her shopping basket and wearing a bonnet, sitting atop a tall column.

Now two researchers have discovered that the true story is very different and think they may have identified who Maud really was. Louise Ryland-Epton and John Chandler of the University of the West of England, working on adjacent parishes for the Victoria County History, and collaborating with Chippenham Museum, have shown that Maud was certainly part of a dynasty of wealthy Bristol shipping merchants. They had country estates in this part of Wiltshire and wanted to maintain an all-weather route and river crossing as an alternative to the overland London Road through Chippenham.

Louise presented their findings in a lecture on Monday evening at Chippenham Library, as part of the 550th-anniversary celebrations, and the new information is being added to the exhibition about Maud currently showing at Chippenham Museum. A full report of the research will be published in an academic journal in due course.

Maud – or Matilda Hethe, as she called herself – endowed property in Chippenham to the care of trustees, prominent among whom was a Bristol merchant and the city’s MP, John Bagot. He had inherited the manor house at Kellaways, a hamlet two miles further up the Avon, where Matilda was also living, and so they were related. In fact, by looking into the trading and family relationships between three influential Bristol families – Bagot, Russell and Hethe – who all had interests in the Chippenham area, the research suggests that Matilda was John Bagot’s elderly aunt. John was buried in Chippenham church, but his grandfather Robert Russell was commemorated in stained glass in Bremhill church, opposite another window remembering John Hethe, Matilda’s husband.

It is known that Bristol merchants trading with London found the road through Chippenham an obstacle in wet weather, as several bequeathed money for its repair. The causeway which Matilda endowed runs right past the site of the house by the river at Kellaways and would have enabled travellers to leave the Bristol Road and cross the Avon further upstream, then climb up to Bremhill to rejoin the London Road into Calne. It was the way that John Bagot himself went when he had to attend parliament – in one direction – or to see to his Bristol affairs – in the other.

Louise’s lecture was part of a wider programme of celebrations taking place through the year in Chippenham, which includes the museum exhibition (continuing until 31 August), a Medieval Fair on 20 July and a special study day Maud Heath and beyond: Exploring the lives of women before1600 which will be held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.