Брод Чалк: Уилтшир ауылы мен қауымдастығы

Village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England

Broad Chalke, sometimes spelled Broadchalke, Broad Chalk or Broadchalk, is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about 8 mile (13 km) west of the city of Salisbury. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Knapp, Mount Sorrel and Stoke Farthing.

Broad Chalke is in the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is halfway along the 13 mile (21 km) Chalke Valley. The parish has two chalk streams, as the River Chalke flows into the River Ebble at Mount Sorrell in the parish, and the main settlement stands on the banks of the Ebble. The valley road runs from Salisbury in the east to Shaftesbury in the west between chalk downs on either side. The village sits at a crossroads where a road from Hampshire in the south runs down Knowle Hill and another route from Fovant and Tisbury in the north runs down Compton Down via Fifield Bavant and all roads meet near the public house in North Street. There is also a spur road along the River Chalke valley from Bowerchalke and Sixpenny Handley.

The parish church of All Saints is a Grade I listed building. It is from the late 13th and 14th centuries, with a 15th century porch. Restoration in 1846 7 was by Wyatt and Brandon. Churches at Alvediston and Bowerchalke were considered to be chapels of the Broad Chalke church, until they became separate parishes in 1861 and 1880 respectively. Broad Chalke and Bowerchalke were united in 1952 and became part of the Chalke Valley team ministry in 1972.

A Congregational chapel was built in or before 1801, and replaced by a new church in 1864, which joined the United Reformed Church at its formation in 1972. In 2006 the church was refurbished and divided to provide a community room, then in 2013 the village shop and post office moved into the church. As of 2016, services continue to be held in the church. Primitive Methodists built a chapel in 1843. The chapel closed c. 1965 and was demolished in 1970.

The village has a C of E Primary School and a doctors' surgery. There has been a village hall since 1914 and a Reading Room (also called the Parish Room) on the same site before the village hall was built. The village has a pub, The Queen's Head. J E Fry & Son, the village shop and Post Office was in South Street and traded as family butchers under the Fry family for almost 100 years. After the closure of the shop and Post Office around Christmas 1992, the butchers began to sell groceries and everyday items and also incorporated the village Post Office which opened within the butchers on 15 June 1993. The shop was featured on BBC South Today as one of the most unusual locations for a Post Office in the region, and the butcher Robert Fry was the subject of ITV's Country Ways programme. He retired on 31 May 2013 and the shop in South Street closed. Chalke Valley Stores at The Marsh.

The Chalke Valley Sports Centre is located in Knighton Road and has a football pitch, tennis courts, skate park and also a Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) for table tennis, short mat bowls, pilates and other indoor functions. Chalke Valley Cricket Club is nominally part of the Sports Centre but has its own management and finances and moved to a new ground at Butt's Field, Bowerchalke in 2010. The Gurston Down speed hill climb course is at Gurston Farm in Broad Chalke and attracts many hundreds of visitors every year.

The civil parish elects a parish council. It is in the area of Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for most local government functions.

It is not known when Broad Chalke was first inhabited or what it was called but fragmentary records from Saxon times indicate that the whole Chalke Valley area was thriving.

An Anglo Saxon charter of 826 records the name of the area including Bowerchalke and Broadchalke as Cealcan gemere. The wills of William King (1545) and John Penny (1555) record the village name as Brood Chalke, whilst the Earl of Pembroke surveys of 1567 and 1590 list it as Brodechalke and Broadchalke.

The spelling of Broad Chalke continued to vary; in 1778 the will of Elizabeth Fifield spelled it as Broadchalk, whilst the 1784 will of Richard Follit used Broad Chalk. In 1963 older children began to attend the secondary school at Wilton. Pupil numbers at Broad Chalke increased after the closure of village schools at Bowerchalke and Bishopstone. In the 1990s the school was extended with a hall and a fourth classroom. The spelling of Broad Chalke continued to vary: the Ordnance Survey maps and village road signs spelled it as Broad Chalke, whilst the Electoral Register used Broadchalke.

In 2007 a new school was built on the eastern outskirts of the village, and the older school became private housing.