Round About Wiltshire;
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LONDON: METHUEN & CO. 1907 HE 6>8\Y3ro 625218 f3 /2.SS CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION vii CHAPTER I MARLBOROUGH I CHAPTER II THE STORY OF THE COLLEGE 2^ CHAPTER III SAVERNAKE, LITTLECOTE, AND RAMSBURY .... 59 CHAPTER IV MARLBOROUGH TO SWINDON AND HIGHWORTH .... 88 CHAPTER V SWINDON TO AVEBURY Il8 CHAPTER VI THE BATH ROAD TO CALNE I45 CHAPTER VII BREMHILL, MALMESBURY, AND LACOCK 1 68 CHAPTER VIII DEVIZES AND THE PEWSEY VALE 1 96 CHAPTER IX PEWSEY TO AMESBURY 226 V vi ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE CHAPTER X PAGE SALISBURY PLAIN AND STONEHENGE 252 CHAPTER XI SALISBURY 28l CHAPTER XII WILTON AND WYLYE VALLEY 3 12 CHAPTER XIII CODFORD TO WESTBURY AND EDINGTON 330 CHAPTER XIV SALISBURY TO CRANBORNE CHASE 353 INDEX 379 INTRODUCTION pretension is made in these pages to an exhaustive NO exploitation of Wiltshire. They are the outcome rather of a long summer's ramble about a county little known but well worth knowing, and are not, I hope, too liberally flavoured with the reminiscent and personal note so seductive to an author in such frequent touch with the associations of his youth. Wiltshire is a county towards which strangers have always seemed to me to cultivate a quite peculiar vagueness, some- times even as regards its position on the map of England. Till the advent of the motor reopened, so to speak, the Bath Road, promoting such familiarity as the motorist may or may not achieve, and the military annexed a corner of Salisbury Plain, very few strangers, save antiquarians, took much notice of a county which the Royal and noble sportsmen of the middle ages and ensuing periods held in such pre- eminent esteem. Wiltshire is quite beyond the circle of villa and residential counties around London, where exotic wealth and prosperity have clustered so thickly as practically to wipe out their natural create an artificial and to some extent conditions, atmosphere,— even an artificial if ornate landscape misleading altogether for any practical purpose as a type of rural England. On the other hand, it lies far short of the mountainous or semi- mountainous regions of West Britain which naturally attract vii viii ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE the multitude of all degrees in holiday seasons. But Wiltshire is a county not only of considerable size but, in its way, of considerable distinction and individuality. It possesses the three mightiest prehistoric monuments, not merely in Britain, but almost in one of the Europe ; most imposing Cathedrals, and quite the most beautiful forest in England. Short, too, of the west and north there are nowhere such inspiring pastoral solitudes as in Wiltshire, nor does any county maintain the features and the habit of the old rural life of England more consistently from one end to the other. Its thatched villages are comparable in picturesqueness with any to be found, and are generally less marred by inharmonious if salutary improvements than those of districts famous for their villages but better known. The vernacular of Wiltshire is rich and characteristic. Its streams, too, are limpid and gravel bottomed, and have the quality approved of by the nobler and more fastidious fishes. It is a county, too, whose landscape, for the most part, can stand the test of winter, owing much of its merit to its spaciousness and solitude. Its country towns are mostly of the its social life in all is less eloquent past ; grades affected than in other comparatively accessible regions by change and the industrial activity of the last century. Indeed Wiltshire has lost no small fraction of its population in feeding what Cobbett called the "accursed wen," and in helping to swell those industrial hives that have somewhat altered the English character, lowered the national physique, and created the social problems that so trouble men's minds to-day. In conclusion, I will take this opportunity of thanking the many friends and acquaintances throughout the county who have in various ways contributed to make easier and pleasanter what was in itself to me a sufficiently pleasant task. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR IN SAVERNAKE FOREST Frontispiece HIGH STREET, MARLBOROUGH IN THE KENNET VALLEY . A SUNBONNET . THE UNDER-SHEPHERD A BACON FACTORY . ENFORD .... ON THE EDGE OF THE PLAIN MARKET LAVINGTON GREEN FODDER EVENING ON SALISBURY PLAIN [By C. B. Gotch) STONEHENGE . A SHEEP FOLD . REMINISCENCE . x ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE at ramsbury. To face page 72 a Valentine Ltd. From Photo by Messrs. J. and Sons, , Dundee COTTAGE AT ALDBOURNE ,, 107 From a Photo by Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Ltd., Dundee THE TOWN HALL, WOOTTON BASSETT . ,, 1 28 a From Photo by Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Ltd. , Dundee STONES AT AVEBURY ,, 138 From a Photo Messrs. Valentine and Ltd. Dundee by J. Sons, , MONOLITHS, AVEBURY ,, I42 From a Photo by Messrs. F. Frith a?id Co., Ltd., Reigate MALMESBURY ABBEY ,, iSo From a Photo by Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Ltd. , Dundee A STREET IN LACOCK ,, 188 From a Photograph by Mr. E. H. Hunt, Lacock CATHEDRAL 281 SALISBURY ...... ,, Messrs. Ltd. From a Photo by J. Valentine and Sons, , Dundee MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE CLOSE, SALISEURY . ,, 292 Messrs. F. Frith and Co. Ltd. From a Photo by , , Reigate POULTRY CROSS, SALISBURY „ 302 From a Photo by Messrs. F. Frith and Co., Ltd., Reigate WILTON HOUSE ; „ 318 From a Photo by Messrs. J. Valentine and Sons, Ltd., Dundee THE WESTBURY HORSE „ 349 From a Photo by Messrs. F. Frith and Co., Ltd., Reigate WARDOUR CASTLE „ 353 From a Photo by Messrs. F. Frith and Co., Ltd., Reigate ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE CHAPTER I MARLBOROUGH proper name in the English language could well be NO more familiar to English ears than the one which heads this chapter. Even its orthodox pronunciation trips easily from the tongue of all but the vulgar, which is the more remarkable as its orthography, after ringing many changes through several centuries, ultimately subsided, like so many British names, into a permanent form at variance with polite utterance. Marlborough had been previously spelt in no less than twenty-nine different ways. What with a great dukedom of renowned origin, a tolerably famous public school, a suffragan bishopric, to say nothing of a host of clubs, public- all houses, music-halls, streets, and crescents over the empire ; what with trade marks on collars, cuffs, straw hats, overcoats, boys' suits, spirituous liquors, bicycles, pony-traps, and other articles of commerce innumerable, the ancient burghers of Merleberg, great no doubt as was their self-esteem, would be amazed could they see how famous the name of their town had now become. " " This is all very well, but Where is Marlborough ? still demand the ninety and nine, or those of them, that is to say, whose curiosity may have been fortuitously awakened. Every one knows that the duke lives at Blenheim, while most church- men know, or should know, that the bishop's sphere of action lies in the metropolis, though as a matter of fact the title has, I believe, been recently extinguished. As for the school it is only 2 ROUND ABOUT WILTSHIRE natural that the uninterested outsider should assume that, like another and not very distant Victorian foundation, this one, too, had been erected on some breezy no-man's land, with a sandy soil and sufficient water-supply, and like its younger neighbour, called after a famous hero in our island story. Indeed, I do not think the academic significance of the name suggests to most people any corresponding topographical signifi- cance whatever. The ancients of Merleberg might exult for the moment, but when they came to look into the matter they would find, I am afraid, that their little town, so favoured, fleeced, and bechartered by successive Angevin and Plantagenet kings, so envied and hated and badly used by Charles the First, so popular and fashionable as a resting-place on the road to Bath, had lost in civic notoriety what it had gained in un- sought spurious fame. It is in some sort smothered under the notoriety gained by others who have borrowed its name. Its ducal, episcopal, and academic godchildren, not merely by their respective notoriety, but by their very detachment from each other have further confused the ninety and nine, and helped to obscure the identity of a fine old English market town in the public mind. But Marlborough, too, has shrunk, in that it has not sen- sibly increased. Three thousand souls constituted a wealthy and important country town in the Stuart period. Such are of situation at figures now small account ; but the makes, any rate, for those aesthetic qualities which it possesses in a high degree. However the men of Merleberg might grieve over their I loss of commercial rank could they behold it, have heard no regrets whatever from the men of Marlborough, civic or academic. On the contrary, there is a praiseworthy con- census of opinion among the enlightened element, at any rate of both, that there is no place like it on the face of the earth, which in these days when everybody goes everywhere and local patriotism is put to severe tests is saying much.