A Beginner's Guide to Salisbury Plain

I have travelled across this area for work for years and had never taken the time to really “see” the places described in this journal. My home-town Devizes sits on the northern perimeter of the Plain; from here the A360 cuts south-easterly across the Plain passing through several villages as it heads towards Amesbury. In spring and summer, the ride can be wonderful – miles of open countryside and rolling hills with just scattered fields of cattle and sheep for company; in winter it can be one of the most desolate places in the country where the weather can change in a moment, with inky-black clouds scudding across the landscape, barely clearing the hilltops as they prepare to deposit their watery cargo.

I follow the road from Devizes to West Lavington, then Tilshead, Shrewton and finally of course, Stonehenge which the road passes directly by. I make just one diversion from the main route; this is to see the ghost village of Imber which sits smack in the centre of the Plain. Imber was evacuated by the military prior to the D-Day landings so they could practise urban warfare. The villagers were told they’d be reinstated within a few months but it’s now been 65 years and the old village has all but disappeared. The road through to the village is open for just a few days each year and fortunately, today is one of those days.

Elsewhere, the Plain is busy today. The UK military own most of it and I see tanks on the westerly horizon ploughing across the torn-up skyline. Tuesdays are “firing days” when the entire area resounds to artillery and tank fire that rattle the windows back in Devizes; goodness knows how the villagers in West Lavington and Tislhead put up with it.

The Plain is beautiful for it’s desolation, one of the last great unspoilt areas of the country as far as civilisation is concerned, just a dotting of small villages, scrub-covered hillsides and vast wetland areas. The Plain was the last breeding grounds for the famed Great Bustard, the world’s heaviest flying bird. The birds became extinct many years ago but have recently been re-introduced from breeding colonies in Russia and are doing well on their old homelands. Their exact location is a closely-guarded secret but if you are lucky, you may just catch a glimpse of one as you roll across the Plain.

Quick Tips:

Firstly, and most importantly, heed the signs that appear at regular intervals along many of the side roads across the Plain. The UK military owns all the land here and you use the roads at their rules. Be ready for the fact that at varying points on the main road, there are “tank crossing places”, indicated by advance warning signs and massive bollards on the crossings. There’s little “give” in a 75-tonne Challenger battle tank and accidents have been recorded where speeding motorists have rocketed around a blind bend to come face-to-face with one of these iron-clad monsters.

Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE leave the designated pathways, bridleways or roads for the landscape here is littered with unexploded ordnance deposited from the ranges. There are plenty of warning signs but nevertheless, the newspapers here often contain stories of the idiots who decided to go “for a weekend’s camping” on Salisbury Plain and then wonder why they were roughly awakened at 4am by heavily armed infantry soldiers.

On a more personal issue, you’ll need stout, waterproof walking boots and a lightweight rain jacket. The best and most reliable guide to the area is the Ordnance Survey Explorer sheet number 130 which covers the entire Plain as well as Salisbury itself and Stonehenge. The map shows all the “out-of-bounds” military areas and all the firing ranges as well as the legitimate pathways that can be walked across the Plain.

To give an idea of the size of the Plain, the military own and control an area roughly equivalent to that of the Isle of Wight.

Best Way To Get Around:

Needless to say, for such a remote and wild area, a car is the only practical means of reaching the Plain. The Plain covers an area bounded north by West Lavington, east by Upavon, south by Amesbury and Wylye and west by Warminster. There are really only two main roads that cross the Plain from north to south, namely the A360 from Devizes to Stonehenge and the A342, from Devizes to Amesbury. From west to east there’s just the one, the B390 which heads east from Knook to Chitterne, Shrewton and Durrington. There is of course the road from Gore Cross on the A360 which heads west to the ghost village of Imber then onwards to Heytesbury but this is closed for most of the year and should not be used under any circumstances without the military’s permission.

Once on the Plain, there are many bridleways and public footpaths – these are all clearly signed and are all visible on the OS map but again, should not be deviated from.

Two railway lines skirt the Plain with the closest stations being at either Warminster or Salisbury itself, both of which will still entail the use of a car or local bus to reach the Plain. There are many local bus services from Devizes, Warminster and Salisbury that drop off in the villages in and around the Plain. These are operated by Wilts & Dorset Bus Company whose timetables can be found at:

http://www.wdbus.co.uk/htm/ttnorthern/index-n.asp

or they can be contacted on 01722 336855.

If travelling from London, the Plain is best reached by taking the M3 motorway out of town, then taking the A303 at junction 8 which passes by Andover and Amesbury on the southern fringes of the Plain.

For those visitors whose interest lies solely with Stonehenge, the #3 service from Salisbury runs from the town to the main carpark at the site. Details can also be found on the W & D website.

Five miles south of Devizes on the A360 brings me to my first port-of-call, namely the village of West Lavington. The village is little more than one long street with a few side lanes that lead to some interesting and historic buildings. I must have driven through here a thousand times and never had the time or inclination to pull over to investigate but today is to be different.

I pull across the main road and deposit the car in Church Lane under the shade of a giant yew whose branches are overhanging the churchyard fence. The church is dedicated to All Saints and sits in a lofted position at the southern end of the village, surrounded by a well-tended churchyard full of ancient gravestones. The church dates to Saxon times although the original wooden building has been rebuilt using flint and stone after the Norman Conquest, possibly in the early 13th century.

This is indeed a very old village – evidence exists of occupation in late Neolithic and Bronze age times with barrows and field systems visible on the hills to the south of the village. Settlement remains from Roman occupation times are to be found in the grounds of Littleton Panell manor, a village to the north which forms the local parish with West Lavington. Saxon development certainly occurred in the village but this is not visible by building remains as the Saxons built entirely with wood; instead, proof is gleaned from the Domeday Book in which the settlement is recorded as “Lafa’s Farm” and contained “ a mill, two hides and eight virgates of land with six plough teams and their men”.

I take a wander around the village although most of the more historic buildings are to be found at the southern end around Stibb Hill. The first I find are the old almshouses which were originally built as the west wing of Dauntsey’s House. These were turned over to “the poor of the parish” in the early 19th century and sadly, due to them falling into dereliction, all have now been partly rebuilt or modernised to the point that they are scarcely recognisable. I follow Stibb Hill, and cross over the babbling Bulkington Brook which flows through the village. To my left is the late-Georgian Pyt House and a bit further along I find a long timber-framed house which rather oddly, is built onto a stone plinth.

I return to the main road and head south to Rutts Lane for here is one of the village’s most striking buildings, the wonderful Dial House, dating to 1691 and displaying a still-working sundial above it’s main entrance.

In April 1689, the village suffered a disastrous fire which destroyed “226 bays of buildings”. A bay was thought to represent the area between two sets of crucks, the wooden frames that provided the support for the roof and walls. Houses, stables, barns and other outbuildings were razed to the ground with a total value of “£1,608, 18 shillings and eightpence”. The only buildings now that pre-date the fire are the Old Manor House, West Lavington Manor and Old House in Duck Street.

Walking back along the main road, I see two huge hooks suspended on the wall of an old converted barn; these were the “thatch hooks” and were used to rip burning thatch from the roofs of cottages to prevent the damage from spreading. They were last used in 1932. Just past here, on the same side is an unnamed building upon whose gable end is a striking (no pun intended) clock which also depicts the phases of the moon. A bit further still and I find the old “Horse and Groom”, once one of the village alehouses that still retains the metal bracket above the door where the pub sign would have hung.

The village has it’s fair share of ghost stories; the first concerns the “Headless Woman” who would appear for a few seconds in the graveyard before disappearing again. In the late 1800’s, the graveyard wall was demolished, revealing the headless skeletons of a woman and child. The second concerns a drummer boy who met a grisly end in the 1770’s. In the years following his demise, an Army colour sergeant was walking past the murder scene when he apparently saw and heard the boy. It frightened him so that he immediately confessed to the murder and subsequently met his maker via the gallows.

Between 1910 and 1936 the as was then War Department (now the Ministry of Defence) gradually acquired over 4,000 acres of the parish land, earmarking it for troop and artillery practise. These days, every Tuesday sees the ranges to both east and west of the village thundering away. The noise is quite deafening and must be the only downside to living in this most historic village that has continued to thrive and grow whilst others see their inhabitants moving to the larger towns for work and facilities.

Returning to the car at West Lavington, I leave the village and head for Tilshead, a further four miles south along the A360. As I enter the place, I could be forgiven for assuming that it’s just another small military garrison with it’s “no tracked vehicles allowed” signs posted at the entrance to most of the side lanes. Tilshead is indeed an important military town but most of the installations are situated on the hillsides surrounding the town and do not as such impose upon this historic place. The name “Tilshead” derives from the name Tidwulr and refers to his area of land that would have supported one family. The source of the River Till is close by but in this instance, the name is purely coincidental. The Domeday Book records the village as having “66 burgesses”, making it one of the wealthiest and largest boroughs in Wiltshire, no doubt due to it’s position on the grasslands of the central Plain which supported thousands of sheep.

The first aspect you notice is that most of the buildings are constructed with stone and flint, some with a check pattern , others with alternate rows. The uplands here are full of flint and it makes for a cheap but immensely robust way of building a house, church, barn or whatever.

The church sits to the north of the main street and is also flint and stone. It is dedicated to St Thomas A’ Becket and dates from the 13th century, it’s stumpy tower barely higher than the chancel walls. Looking up at the chancel wall, you can see an original slatted wooden window, this dating to a time when glass was simply too scarce and too expensive to be utilised. Like it’s neighbour in West Lavington, it too sits in a tranquil little churchyard, overlooked by enormous yews. Heading west along the main street, to the left are the Flood Cottages. These were built in 1842 from public funds to support the needy of the parishes of Tilshead and Shrewton who had sustained losses in the flood of that year. It might seem rather strange for there are no major watercourses in the area. The inscription reads….

THESE COTTAGES WERE BUILDED IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1842 FROM A PORTION OF THE FUND SUBSCRIBED BY THE POOR OF THIS AND FIVE NEIGHBOURING PARISHES IN THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1841 ARE VESTED IN THE NAMES OF TWELVE TRUSTEES WHO SHALL LET THEM TO THE BEST ADVANTAGE AND AFTER RESERVING OUT OF THE RENTS A SUM SUFFICIENT TO MAINTAIN THE PREMISES IN GOOD REPAIR SHALL EXPEND THE REMAINDER IN FUEL AND CLOTHING AND DISTRIBUTE THE SAME AMONGST THE POOR OF THE SAID PARISHES ON THE 16 DAY OF JANUARY FOR EVER BEING THE ANNIVERSARY OF THAT AWFUL VISITATION.

(They weren’t big on punctuation back in 1842)

On 16th January 1841, a rapid thaw set in after two days of exceptionally heavy snow on the hills surrounding the village. The thaw caused a huge deluge of water to rush down into the village across land that was still frozen and therefore, could not absorb any of the torrent. By all accounts, a wall of water some ten feet deep hurtled through the village sweeping most of the buildings away before it. Fortunately, a warning was received and no villagers were killed although the damage to property was enormous, with barns, houses, fences and walls being totally destroyed as well as many head of sheep and cattle.

The village does boast an very good pub in the Rose and Crown where I have both eaten and had a beer on several occasions – like the rest of the village, it too is built from the local flint. Not that much else to say about Tilshead other than the fact that it does sit smack bang in the middle of the Plain and does suffer from extremes of weather, ranging from howling gales to white-out blizzards. If you like “rural”, then Tilshead could be right up your street.

Another five miles south brings me to the village of Shrewton. The surrounding area abounds with early settlements such as Addestone, Maddington, Rollestone and Bourton which are all part of the present-day parish. The three major estates of the area all formed together in 1236 to become “Sheriff’s Town” from which the latter day name is derived. This was due to Edward of Salisbury who held the estates and who was of course Sheriff of Wiltshire.

The village, like Tilshead, is surrounded by Neolithic barrows and has the remains of a field system to it’s north. Roman and Saxon artefacts have been unearthed around the place. Indeed, the area was probably at it’s peak during these times as the Domesday Book records that there was sufficient arable land for “25 villeins, 29 bordars, 2 cottars and 20 serfs”, as well as “21 plough teams”.

The village sits in the Till Valley and again, most of the earlier properties were constructed with the local flint and stone. It is the centre for a wide expanse of the Plain and this is reflected in the number of businesses that flourish here. The major sight in the village is the blind-house or lock-up, a domed stone building that sits adjacent to the main road. This was built primarily as a cell for local miscreants although it was also used to hold prisoners overnight who were being transported from the assize courts in Devizes to Salisbury gaol. It’s precarious position by the side of a major road caused it to deteriorate considerably, not least of all when it was hit by a tank during WWII, and more recently by heavy lorries, so in the 1980’s, it was moved brick-by-brick and rebuilt several feet away from the roadside.

The village church is well back from the road and is accessed via a short track opposite the present-day filling station. The church is only open one day per week and like the others I’ve seen today, is small, constructed with flint, and has a stubby tower. Like Tilshead, there are also Flood Cottages here at the northern end of the village which shows the extent of the damage from the 1841 disaster. These too have a wall plaque depicting the history of the houses but like those in Tilshead, these have also been rebuilt and have lost their original charm.

The downlands all around the village were ideal for sheep rearing and for growing wheat and barley. At one time, Shrewton possessed it’s own water-mill but by the mid 16th century, a wind-mill was in use at Maddington. This remained in use until 1841 but had been converted to steam by the 1890’s and fell into disuse by the early 1900’s.

Visitors will notice that the kerbstones here are edged with metal – this was done to protect them from the heavy tracked vehicles that regularly thundered through the village en route to the ranges. The military greatly increased their land ownership around the village in the early 1900’s and today, Shrewton is surrounded by huge camps such as Larkhill as well as the firing ranges.

There’s a village right in the centre of Salisbury Plain that has become something of an enigma; it appears on few maps, is therefore difficult to locate, and more importantly, can only be accessed via a narrow road that the military opens up just a couple of times a year. The road leaves the main A360 at Gore Cross and heads west for several miles across the expanse of Salisbury Plain with little other than scrub covered hillsides to look at. The village is Imber and it’s history is fascinating……

A settlement was known to exist here in Roman times and there is evidence of old tracks that lead out from the village in many directions. Documented evidence begins in Saxon times and the village is mentioned in the Domeday Book when it’s population was thought to be around fifty. The village sits astride what used to be a through road from Gore Cross to Heytesbury, with it’s manor, church, post office, pub, farm and cottages. The road followed the course of Imber Dock, a stream whose source was way up on the Plain.

Back in the late 19th century, the War Office needed an area where it could practise manoeuvres with ground troops as well as a range for artillery firing. Obviously, this had to be well away from any existing towns or villages and so large expanses of Salisbury Plain began to be bought up, initially to the east of the village on the road to Gore Cross. As military hardware became more sophisticated and artillery became longer range, the existing land on the Plain became too small and, although the War Office had stopped purchasing land by the beginning of WWI, it soon started to grab whatever it could. Gradually, Imber became surrounded by ranges until local farms were purchased as well as land in the village itself.

The locals were only too pleased initially to sell up; the agricultural depression of the time plus the good prices the War Office offered, persuaded all but the most die-hard to sell their land and before long, the military owned just about every square yard available.

Life did still continue in the village until a shock announcement in November 1943 was to change the history of the village forever.

A meeting was called by the War Office and every villager was asked to attend. The military were preparing for the D-Day landings and required an area where they could recreate what we today would call urban warfare. They thought that once the beaches of Normandy had fallen, they would have to embark upon house-to-house fighting to force the Germans back and, with this in mind, they wanted to train both UK and US forces for the assault. The villagers were given 47 days to leave the village with a promise that they could return “when this all blew over”.

Most left peacefully, after all, they had no say in the matter and none wanted to be seen to be going against the war effort. Compensation was poor and a few stalwarts did refuse to give up their farms and businesses, most notably the local blacksmith who was forcibly evicted by the army whilst clinging to his anvil where he had made his living for 40 year. He had the dubious distinction of being the first evacuated villager to die and be brought back to Imber for burial.

The training commenced with the forces constructing their own “village” where the soldiers could practise what is now called FIBUA – fighting in built up areas. This has continued up to the present day with troops being trained for the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, the Falklands, Iraq and so on.

Needless to say, the villagers were never invited back – Imber had simply become too important to the military to relinquish, plus it now meant they effectively owned almost all of the Plain, an area equivalent to the Isle of Wight.

I drive down the main street today – all that’s left is the pub, the manor, the church of St Giles and a few farm buildings, all boarded up and all out-of-bounds to civilians. They used to let the villagers back every New Year’s Eve for a service in the church but years of repeated artillery and tank fire has weakened the structure beyond all repair and it is no longer deemed safe. There are more military-built buildings here than original ones and the place has a desolate, lost air about it, full of ghosts but not much else.

It’s now 65 years since the village was evacuated and the surviving villagers are numbering less and less with the passing of each year. Some make the trip out to Imber for the annual peace vigil that is now held in place of the church service and this year they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Rather sadly, they can’t even pay their respects to their loved ones who are buried just a few yards away in the grounds of St Giles.

One day soon, maybe a stray shell will explode in the village and wipe it from the map forever, whether that would be a good or bad thing, I’m not really sure…….

The last stop on my trip today where the A360 meets the A303 is Stonehenge. This is situated another four miles south from Shrewton and around 3 miles west from Amesbury. It occupies an area of high ground and is today as always, blowing a gale and bloody freezing. Being a National Trust member allows me in for free although the site is managed by English Heritage; it’s a reciprocal arrangement they have with some of the UK’s top sights.

Thanks to idiots intent on carving their names in the stonework, you cannot these days get nearer than 100 feet from the stones which is a shame although, having bought along the 300mm telephoto lens, it didn’t make any difference to me as far as the pictures were concerned.

Stonehenge was built in three stages, an accumulation of an estimated 30 million man-hours of work. Bearing in mind that the most up-to-date tools available were rollers, wedges and levers, then it does bring into perspective the amazing effort that created this most iconic of the UK’s Neolithic monuments. Work started around 3,100 BC; this saw the construction of the “henge” or earthwork and ditch which what was how the site looked for the next millennium. The ditches contain “Aubrey Holes” which are large pits excavated from the chalk. They have steep sides, flat bottoms and are approximately one meter deep and wide. The holes form a circle about 90 meters in diameter with recent excavations revealing cremated human remains in some of them.

The holes are not believed to have been specifically built as graves, but more likely as part of the religious ceremonies that took place here. Many are still visible on the site and some are marked by white circles in the car park in their original positions. This was the first stage of Stonehenge, earthworks and a ditch, after which the site was abandoned and almost forgotten about for close on a thousand years.

Stage two began around 2150 BC and was the most dramatic phase of the construction. It was certainly the most strenuous as far as the labourers were concerned. Some 82 bluestones, each tipping the scales at 4 tonnes were carved from the underlying rock strata at the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales. Each huge stone would have to have been chiselled out of the rock face to pretty much it’s required measurements prior to being loaded onto sledges and dragged over rollers all the way to the Welsh coast, close to what is today Milford Haven. Here they were loaded onto rafts and floated along the Welsh coast until they reached the River Avon.

From here, they were floated upstream to the confluence of the River Frome and from there, another back-breaking “drag-and-roll” across land to Warminster. The penultimate stage was to load the stones onto rafts once more and float them down the River Wylye to Salisbury, then transfer to the Salisbury Avon to West Amesbury, then culminating in a final three mile roll across the Plain to deposit them at their resting place.

It’s hard to even conceive the planning and geographical knowledge this must have entailed as well as the sheer muscle power required to lift 82 four tonne stones all the way from Preseli to Stonehenge, a distance of about 230 miles. Then there’s the navigational prowess to steer the rafts along 150 miles of Welsh coastline, coping with tides, currents and sandbars.

Having arrived on site, the stones were erected in an incomplete double circle. Also, the entrance to the original earthworks were widened and the massive “Heel Stones” raised. Finally, the nearest part of the avenue was built, forming a perfect alignment with the rising midsummer sun. Stage two was complete.

Stage three commenced around 2000 BC and this defined the shape of Stonehenge that we all recognise today. This saw the arrival of the giant Sarsen Stones, used both as uprights and as lintels.. These huge stones originated from a site on the Marlborough Downs, about 25 miles east of Stonehenge. There are marked similarities between the Sarsen Stones of Stonehenge and the huge standing stones at Avebury, Wiltshire’s other prehistoric circle. The Sarsens all weighed in at around 50 tonnes and again, we can only marvel at the strength, fortitude and ingenuity of these ancient masons.

The terrain from Marlborough had no rivers to facilitate “easy” handling of the stones so each Sarsen was manhandled across 25 miles of undulating hills and valleys using rollers and sledges, each one requiring possibly 500 men to pull each stone with a further 100 needed to keep replacing the rollers in front of the sledge. All the Sarsens were erected in an outer circle and all originally had lintels linking them to the next stone on either side. It’s blatantly obvious to any visitor here that many of the Sarsens are missing today and there is no trace of them nearby or within a considerable distance from the site.

Finally, five massive Trlithons were erected in the centre of the Sarsens in a horseshoe configuration, most of which remain to this day. As a postscript, some of the bluestones were rearranged around 1500 BC. There were 82 of these originally, of which some 60 comprised the circle but like the Sarsens, over the centuries they have fallen, been removed and probably broken up. Many now remain as stumps beneath the surface.

Well, that’s my trip over with for today and it’s been quite a day. I’ve seen three vibrant villages, one ghost village and one prehistoric site, enough for any day’s intake. AND, it’s only a 30 minute drive back home.