Prehistory The area had been occupied since
Neolithic times but not necessarily continuously. The parish contains two important Neolithic sites:
Durrington Walls and
Woodhenge. Archaeological excavations indicate that the Neolithic inhabitants of the village kept a large number of pigs, with bone evidence suggesting that the pigs were unusually large for the time. This may be because inhabitants fattened them up to sell them to visitors to nearby Stonehenge.
Middle Ages There is little evidence of
Saxon occupation, but this may be because buildings and utensils of that time were made of wood, so little survives. The
Domesday Book recorded two estates in 1086, having land for one plough team and with of meadow. These two estates may represent the later two manors. West End manor was part of the king's estate of Amesbury until 1120 but East End manor had different origins, being privately owned by
Patrick de Salisbury. At this time each manor was using the
open field system, but over time this system evolved into a two, and then a
three, field system. The population also began increasing and in 1377 there were 139 poll tax payers making Durrington one of the most populous villages in the
hundred of Amesbury. In 1390, Durrington's manors had a rental income of £40 which gradually decreased to £29 8s 6d in 1521. In 1399 the West End manor was given as an endowment of the newly created
Winchester College, and an excellent collection of documents on its management and usage has been preserved by the college. They have also provided the name for College Road. In 1405 the Durrington Fire occurred, the cause of which is unknown. It is widely theorised that a lamp falling onto a bale of hay caused it to ignite, or possibly that a house fire got out of control. Whatever the cause, the fire resulted in the destruction of most of the West End because most of the houses were built in an unusually close proximity to one another. Many of the West End families were left homeless, but were generously compensated by Winchester College.
Reformation to 19th century The village remained a prosperous farming community although, apart from the church, there is little visual evidence before the 17th century. In 1610 East End Manor was extended with an east-west range, changing it into an L–shaped building. This new extension was used to shelter Catholic priests during the
Reformation, with a number of
priest holes being found here. There are 17th-century houses of timber and cob, with thatched roofs, surviving in College Road, High Street and Church Street. In 1676 the population was said to be 334 people. Despite evidence of a substantial amount of building work, mainly farmhouses, in the 18th century the village did not really increase in size and remained concentrated around its two main streets. One of the Salisbury Plain's last
great bustards was shot in Durrington by a
shepherd in 1802. He gave it to a Mr Moore, who commissioned a painting of it by a Mr Dudman.
Recent history A second Durrington Fire occurred in 1921 when the thatch to the Old Rectory on Church Street caught fire, the wind took the embers over the Church tower landing on the thatched tied cottages to the south, razing most and leaving the remainder ruined. The Old Rectory was rebuilt under a tiled roof, and is now one of the village's more substantial houses. The cottages were removed and are now replaced by small number of residential mobile homes.
Judaism Although John Burgess asserted (without evidence) that a community of
Jews settled in the East Side of the village shortly before 1405, this cannot be true as there were no Jewish communities present in England at that time. ==Governance==