A brief history

Orcheston is a civil parish and village in Wiltshire, England, lying on Salisbury Plain less than a mile north-west of neighbouring Shrewton. The present-day village combines the two former parishes of Orcheston St Mary and Orcheston St George and includes the hamlet of Elston. The village is recorded in the Domesday Book, with the spelling Orchestone.

The two civil parishes of Orcheston, based on the two Church of England parish churches of St Mary and St George, were united into a single civil parish in 1934 and into a single ecclesiastical parish in 1971.

The parish gives its name to the 'Orcheston long grass' (Agrostis stolonifera), also called 'Creeping Bent', the most commonly used species of Agrostis. The Rough-Stalked Meadow Grass (Poa trivialis), is also called Orcheston Grass, and in the early 19th century there was something of a controversy among botanists as to which was the true Orcheston Grass.

The parishes unite

Orcheston St. Mary lies in the upper Till valley. Before the late 11th century there may have been a single large estate called Orcheston, but in 1086 four estates, probably divisions of it, bore the name, and Orcheston St. Mary parish was formed from two of them. In the late 13th century the parish was called Orcheston Bovill: the suffix, the surname of lords of the principal manor, was replaced from the 14th century by the suffix St. Mary, the dedication of the church.

The other two Domesday estates made up Orcheston St. George parish: a detached part of a southern tail of Orcheston St. Mary parish lay between the two main parts of Orcheston St. George, and the parish embraced several islands of Orcheston St. George.

The parishes were united as Orcheston in 1934.

The parish council

Orcheston Parish Councils represents their local community and provide services, such as managing public spaces, playing fields, and street lighting.

The parish council also is influential in guiding local planning and community well-being through projects and partnerships.

They fund these services through a "precept" collected as part of council tax and are responsible for improving the local environment and quality of life for residents.