Ham is a village

Village

A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 and civil parish in the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 county of Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

. In the Census 2001

United Kingdom Census 2001

A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....

, the parish had a population

Population

A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

 of 152.

Location

Position:

Nearby towns and cities: Hungerford

Hungerford

Hungerford is a market town and civil parish in Berkshire, England, 9 miles west of Newbury. It covers an area of and, according to the 2001 census, has a population of 5,559 .- Geography :...

, Marlborough, Newbury

Newbury, Berkshire

Newbury is a civil parish and the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in England. It is situated on the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal, and has a town centre containing many 17th century buildings. Newbury is best known for its racecourse and the adjoining former USAF...

Nearby villages: Shalbourne

Shalbourne

Shalbourne is a civil parish in the English county of Wiltshire. Besides a village of the same name, the parish includes a number of widely spaced small settlements, including Bagshot and Stype, to the north, and Rivar and Oxenwood to the south...

, Buttermere

Buttermere, Wiltshire

Buttermere is a village and civil parish on the eastern boundary of Wiltshire. England. It stands above the steep escarpment of Ham Hill, and at above sea level it is the highest village in Wiltshire and probably the highest in Wessex.-Local government:...

, Inkpen

Inkpen

Inkpen is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire about southeast of Hungerford, close to the county boundaries with Wiltshire and Hampshire.-Amenities and landmarks:...

, Combe

Combe, Berkshire

Combe is a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire. It is situated in the district of West Berkshire,on the top of the downs near Walbury Hill and Combe Gibbet, overlooking the village of Inkpen and the valley of the River Kennet...

Nearby Ham Hill

Ham Hill SSSI, Wiltshire

Ham Hill is an area of chalk downland in Wiltshire, on the steep banks running alongside the road from the village of Ham to Buttermere, close to the Berkshire border. A biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, notified in 1971, covers 1.5 hectares of the site; this designation is due to...

 is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Local government

Ham is a civil parish with an elected parish council. It also falls within the area of the Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council is the unitary authority for most of the county of Wiltshire, in the West of England, the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council and to four districts—Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire—all of which had been created in 1973 and were...

 unitary authority

Unitary authority

A unitary authority is a type of local authority that has a single tier and is responsible for all local government functions within its area or performs additional functions which elsewhere in the relevant country are usually performed by national government or a higher level of sub-national...

. Both councils are responsible for different aspects of local government.

Notable Ham people

In 1922, Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey

Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...

 and Ralph Partridge, both members of the Bloomsbury group

Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...

, bought Ham Spray House, and several of that group and other writers and artists spent time there from then until Ralph died in 1960, including:

• Dora Carrington
  Dora Carrington
  Dora de Houghton Carrington , known generally as Carrington, was a British painter and decorative artist, remembered in part for her association with members of the Bloomsbury Group, especially the writer Lytton Strachey....
  
   (1893–1932) (painter and decorative artist)
• Frances Partridge
  Frances Partridge
  Frances Catherine Partridge CBE was a long-lived member of the Bloomsbury Group and a writer, probably best known for the publication of her diaries...
  
   (1900–2004) (writer and diarist)
• Lytton Strachey
  Lytton Strachey
  Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
  
  (1880–1932) (writer and biographer)

Village amenities

Ham has a pub, the Crown and Anchor, which also houses the Indigo Palace Indian Restaurant. The village hall is available for hire, and until May 2007 was used on most days of the week as a pre school.

Sources

• Wiltshire County Council Website page on Ham, retrieved 23:15 Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)
• Kennet District Council Website page on Ham Parish, retrieved 23:15 Nov 12, 2004 (UTC)