Map - Erlestoke

Erlestoke is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain. The village lies about 6 mi east of Westbury and the same distance southwest of Devizes.

Erlestoke Prison, the only prison in Wiltshire, is within the parish.

The ancient parish of Erlestoke was a chapelry of Melksham. The Crown was lord of the manor of Erlestoke; the first recorded grant of land was by Henry I in the 12th century. From the 16th until the early 18th the Brouncker family held land at Erlestoke, including Henry Brouncker, a Member of Parliament in the 16th and early 17th. Later owners included Peter Delmé, an 18th-century MP; Joshua Smith (1732–1819), MP for Devizes; and George Watson-Taylor (1771–1841), also MP for Devizes. The Watson-Taylors built up large estates at Erlestoke, Coulston (including Baynton House), Great Cheverell and Edington until they were divided and sold between 1907 and 1910, following the death in 1902 of Simon Watson Taylor; Erlestoke Park remained in the family until it was sold in 1919.

The current form of the village is largely due to Joshua Smith, who between the 1780s and the 1810s was responsible for replacing the Elizabethan manor house with one higher up the hill east of the village, designed by George Steuart. The new house was at first called Stoke Park, and later Erlestoke Park and Erlestoke House. Smith landscaped the park which surrounds the village on three sides, adding a lake, and moving the houses of the village to the current High Street. Newly built estate cottages incorporated pieces of sculpture and architectural fragments from the earlier manor house; an example is Tilted Lodge, c. 1800.

By 1859 there was a school in a building owned by the Watson-Taylors, which formerly served as the laundry for the Erlestoke Park estate. The building was extended in 1893 and came into Church ownership in 1920; children of all ages attended until 1935, when older children were transferred elsewhere. The school closed in 1980 following the building of a new primary school at Great Cheverell.

The Church of the Holy Saviour was built next to the gates of Erlestoke Park in 1880 by G.E. Street for Lady Hannah Watson-Taylor (1818–1887), wife of Simon Watson Taylor. The building has fragments of an earlier church dedicated to St James, possibly from the 12th century; the 16th-century pulpit and five 17th-century bells are also from the earlier church. 18th-century tombs remain in the disused churchyard of the former church, some 150 metres to the northeast.