Wanderings in Wessex · Chapter 16Introduction (14)
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The road to the south can be followed down the river to Fordingbridge (see Chapter II), but it is proposed to return by the east bank of the river past Burford Park and Trafalgar, the renamed Standlynch Manor, bestowed on Earl Nelson in 1814, to the neighbourhood of Alderbury, over three miles out of Salisbury on the Southampton road. The scenery of this part of the Christchurch Avon is very pleasant in a quiet way, the wide views towards the chalk hills on each side and the distant spire of the Cathedral, visible from every point of vantage, make the walk especially enjoyable. Alderbury is said to be the original village of the "Blue Dragon" of Mrs. Lupin and Mark Tapley, immortalized by Charles Dickens, though some claim Amesbury to be the original of this scene. It is difficult to say that any particular village could be in the novelist's mind if, as seems probable, he had not seen Wiltshire when Martin Chuzzlewit was written. St. Mary's Grange, on the Salisbury road, is suggested as the original of Mr. Pecksniff's residence. Alderbury House was built from the demolished campanile of Salisbury Cathedral.
To obtain a really good idea of the hill country, apart from that of the Plain, a walk should be taken, by those who are impervious to fatigue, to Broad Chalke, about seven miles from East Harnham, or even farther to Berwick St. John, more than six miles higher up the stream. The river Ebble itself, if river it can be called, is rarely in evidence, but the valley it drains is beautiful and, though it contains quite a string of villages, is so remote as to be seldom visited by anyone not on business bent. The vale seems to end naturally at Coombe Bisset, though the river flows on through Honnington and Odstock for four miles farther before it reaches the Avon. The church, set picturesquely on its hill at Coombe, is an old Transitional Norman building with some later additions. The village in the hollow below appeals to one as a happy place in which to end one's days. So also appears Stratford Tony, farther up the vale, where, as its name suggests, the Roman road from Old Sarum to Blandford once cut across the valley in the usual Roman manner. Bishopstone, the next village, has a very fine cruciform church, most interesting in its general details. The patron of the living was the Bishop of Winchester; thus the village gets its name. It is possible that some of the bishops took special interest in the building and that would account for its elaboration. The style is Decorated passing into Perpendicular in the nave. The chancel and transepts are peculiarly fine and the vaulting of the first-named will be much admired, as also the beautiful windows. The south door of the chancel with its handsome porch and groined roof; the vaulted chamber, or so-called cloister, outside the south transept, the use of which is unknown; the recessed tomb in the north transept and the grand arch on the same side of the church; all call for especial notice.
The right-hand road at Stoke Farthing leads direct to Broad Chalke, or a longer by-way on the other side of the stream takes us to the same goal by way of Bury Orchard, a village as delectable as its name. Chalke likewise boasts of a fine church, also cruciform and dating, so far as the chancel and north transept are concerned, from the thirteenth century. In that transept the old wooden roof still remains. The nave is Perpendicular, solid and plain; the roof quite modern, though the corbels that supported the old one, carved with representations of angels singing and playing, were not disturbed. The sedilia in the chancel and the aumbry in the north transept should be seen. The lych-gate was erected to the memory of Rowland Williams of Essays and Reviews fame. John Aubrey, antiquary and nature lover, who was a native of Easton Pierce in North Wilts, was a resident here for a long time, and a modern literary association is found in the fact that the Old Rectory has been the home of Mr. Maurice Hewlett for some years.
The hills now begin to close in upon the road and another valley penetrates into the highlands which form the northern portion of Cranborne Chase. In this vale, in a lovely hollow between the rounded hills, is the small village of Bower Chalke. Westwards, up the main valley, we pass through Fifield Bavant, where the church is one of the many that claim to be the smallest in England. Ebbesborne Wake, the next hamlet, lies cramped in a narrow gully between Barrow Hill and Prescombe Down. The restored church is not of great interest, but an unnamed tomb within bears these very pertinent lines:
AS THOU DOST LYVE, O READER DERE, SO DYD I ONCE WHICH NOW LYE HEARE AND AS I AM SO SHALT THOU BE FOR ALL IS FRAYLE AS THOU MAYST SEE.
Alvedeston, the last village actually in the valley, lies under a spur of Middle Down from which there is a magnificent view of the "far flung field of gold and purple—regal England." Alvedeston church is an old cruciform building containing the tomb of a knight in full armour. This is one of the Gawen family. The Gawens were for many years lords of Norrington, a beautiful old house near by. Aubrey suggests that they were descended from that Gawain of the Round Table who fought Lancelot and was killed. The last village, Berwick St. John, is high upon the hills and close to Winklebury Camp. Its Early English church, as is usual in this district, has transepts. The Perpendicular tower, though rather squat, is of fine design and the interior has several interesting monuments and effigies, including effigies of Sir John Hussey and Sir Robert Lucie clad in mail. A pleasant custom obtains here of ringing a bell every night during the winter to guide home the wanderer upon the lonely hills. This was provided for in the will of a former rector—John Gane (1735). From Berwick the hill walk to Salisbury, spoken of in the earlier part of this chapter, should be taken.
Another valley worth exploring is that of the Bourne, north-east of Salisbury, down which the main railway line from London passes for its last few miles before reaching the city. The Bourne is crossed by the London road nearly two miles from the centre of the town. About half a mile up stream is the ford where the old way crossed the river to Sarum. The London road rises to the right and traverses the lonely chalk uplands to the Winterslow Hut, lately known as the "Pheasant," a reversion to its old name. Here lodged Hazlitt, essayist and recluse, for a period of nine years, and here several of his best known dissertations were penned, including the appropriate "On Living to One's Self." Charles Lamb, accompanied by his sister, visited him here. We, however, do not propose to travel by the great London highway, but to turn to the left just across St. Thomas' Bridge, and soon after passing the railway we cross the old Roman road where it appears as a narrow track making direct for the truncated cone of Old Sarum away to the west across the valley. Figsbury Rings is the name of the camp-crowned summit to the east of our road. The first three villages are all "Winterbournes "—Earls, Dauntsey and Gunner. The first two have rebuilt churches, but the third—Gunner—has a Transitional building of some interest. The name is a corruption of Gunnora, spouse of one of the Delameres who were lords hereabouts in the early thirteenth century. Farther on, Porton will not detain us very long, but Idmiston has a church that is a fine example of the style so well called Decorated. The tower, indeed, is Norman, but the clustered columns of the nave with their carved capitals and bases are beautiful specimens of fourteenth-century architecture. The Early English chancel has a triple east window and side lancets. The two-storied porch is late Decorated or early Perpendicular. A tomb of Giles Rowbach and tablets to the Bowie family are of interest. One of the Bowles, a vicar of the church, was a notable Spanish scholar and made a translation of Don Quixote. Boscombe Rectory was once occupied by "the judicious" Hooker and the first part of the Ecclesiastical Polity was written here. Another theologian—Nicholas Fuller—famous in his day, held the living of the next village—Allington. At Newton Tony, over eight miles from Salisbury, the pleasant scenery of the Bourne may be said to end. Beyond, we reach an outlying part of the Plain that is seen to better advantage from other directions. Newton Tony has a station on the branch line to Amesbury and Bulford Camp. Wilbury House, on the road to Cholderton, was erected in the Italian style in the early seventeenth century by the Bensons, a noted family in those days, one of whose members is commemorated by a brass in the church. The house was the home of the late Mr. T. Gibson Bowles, formerly the member for King's Lynn.
The valley goes on to Cholderton, Shipton Bellinger and Tidworth, where are situated the head-quarters of the Southern Military Command. The Collingbournes—Ducis and Kingston—are much farther on, right at the head of the valley, and eighteen miles from Salisbury. If the explorer has penetrated as far as Tidworth a train can be taken three miles across the Down to Ludgershall, a very ancient place near the Hampshire border. It would seem to have been of some importance in earlier days. "The castell stoode in a parke now clene doun. There is of late times a pratie lodge made by the ruines of it and longgethe to the king" (Leland). To this castle came the Empress Maud and not far away the seal of her champion, Milo of Hereford, was found some years since. All that is left to show that Leland's "clene doun" was a slight exaggeration is a portion of the wall of the keep built into a farm at the farther end of the little town. The twelfth-century church is interesting. Here may be seen the effigy of Sir Richard Brydges, the first owner of the Manor House (or "pratie lodge") which succeeded the castle. The picturesque appearance of the main street is enhanced by the old Market Cross which bears carved representations of the Crucifixion and other scenes from the New Testament.
CHAPTER X
STONEHENGE AND THE PLAIN
The direct route from Salisbury to Amesbury is (or was) the loneliest seven miles of highway in Wiltshire. No villages are passed and but one or two houses; thus the road, even with the amenities of Amesbury at the other end is, under normal conditions, an ideal introduction to the Plain. The parenthesis of doubt refers to that extraordinary and, let us hope, ephemeral transformation which has overtaken the great tract of chalk upland encircling Bulford Camp. The fungus growth of huts which, during the earlier years of the Great War, gradually crept farther and farther from the pre-war nucleus and sent sporadic growths afield into unsuspected places, will undoubtedly vanish as time passes, just as the unnaturally busy traffic of the road will also disappear. Some of the gaunt incongruities visible from near Stonehenge have, happily, already vanished and in this brief description they will be, as far as is possible, ignored. Certain it is that those readers who have had the misfortune to be connected with them by force of "iron circumstance" will not wish for reminders of their miseries.
Old Sarum is on the left of, and close to, the road. It can be most conveniently visited from this side. At present the most interesting part of the great mound is the actual fosse and vallum. The interior, while excavations are in progress, is too much a chaotic rubbish heap to be very inviting. But again this is merely a passing phase and soon the daisy-starred turf will once more mantle the grave of a dead city. The valley road turns off to the left a short distance past the railway and goes to Stratford-sub-castle, just under the shadow of the great mound to the west. This forms a pleasant enough introduction to the scenery and villages of the Upper Avon. The Manor House at Stratford is associated with the Pitt family, for the estate came by purchase to the celebrated Governor Pitt, the one-time owner of the diamond named after him. His descendant, the Earl of Chatham, was member for Old Sarum when it was the most celebrated, and execrated, of all the "rotten boroughs." For many years the elections took place under a tree in a meadow below the hill. This tree was destroyed in a blizzard during the winter of 1896. The Early English and Perpendicular church is quaint and picturesque. On its tower will be seen an inscription to Thomas Pitt and within, an ancient hour-glass stand. The old Parsonage has the inscription over the entrance:—
PARVA SED APTA DOMINO
1675
The road now crosses the Avon bridge at a point where the western road from Old Sarum once forded the river, and follows the valley to the three Woodfords, Lower, Middle, and Upper. Just past the middle village, in a loop of the Avon, is Heale House, now rebuilt. In the old mansion Charles took refuge during his flight after Worcester. The secret room in which he hid was preserved in the reconstruction. Lake, a beautiful old Tudor House, lately burned, but now restored, stands near the river bank south of Wilsford, through which village we pass to reach West Amesbury, eight miles from Salisbury. The fine modern mansion not far from Wilsford is the seat of Lord Glenconner.
Another route which keeps on the east bank of the Avon through a sometimes rough by-way, starts from the Salisbury side of the Avon bridge, close to Old Sarum, and passes through the hamlets of Little Durnford, Salterton and Netton to Durnford, where there is a fine church, partly Norman, with an imposing chancel arch and north and south doors of this period. The remainder of the building is mainly Early English. Some old stained glass in the Perpendicular windows of the nave should be noticed and also the chained copy of Bishop Jewel's Apologie or Answer in Defense of the Churche of Englande, dated 1571, in the chancel. The pulpit dates from the early seventeenth century and is a well-designed piece of woodwork with carving of that period. A brass to Edward Young and his family, two recessed tombs in the south wall, a few scraps of wall painting, and the fine Norman font with interlaced arches and sculptured pillars, are some of the other interesting items in this old church. Ogbury Camp rises above the village to the east; a lane to the north of it leads in rather more than three miles to Amesbury.
In the mist of legend and tradition that surrounds the towns and hamlets of the Plain the origin of Amesbury is lost. The name is supposed to be derived from Ambres-burh—the town of Aurelius Ambrosius—a native British king with a latinized name who reigned about the year 550. In the Morte d'Arthur "Almesbury" is the monastery to which Guinevere came for sanctuary, and romantic tradition asserts that Sir Lancelot took the body of the dead Queen thence to Glastonbury. We are on firmer ground when we come to the time of the tenth-century house of Benedictine nuns dispersed by Henry II for "that they did by their scandalous and irreligious behaviour bring ill fame to Holy Church." It had been founded by a royal criminal, that stony-hearted Elfrida of Corfe, who murdered her stepson while he was a guest at her door. But very soon there was a new house for women and men—a branch of a noted monastery at Fontevrault in Anjou—of great splendour and prestige in which the women took the lead. To this Priory came many royal and noble ladies, including Eleanor of Brittany, granddaughter of Henry II and Eleanor of England, widow of Henry III. The Priory met the same fate as most others at the Dissolution and its actual site is uncertain. Protector Somerset obtained possession of the property and afterwards a house was built by Inigo Jones, most of which has disappeared in subsequent additions and alterations. While the Queensberry family were in possession the poet Gay was a guest here and wrote, in a sham cave or grotto still existing on the river bank, the Beggar's Opera, that satire on certain aspects of eighteenth-century life which, strangely enough, became lately popular after a long period of comparative oblivion.
Amesbury Church once belonged to the Priory. Its appearance from the outside gives the impression that it is unrestored. This is not the case, however, for the drastic restoration and partial rebuilding has taken place at various times. The architecture is Norman and Early English with Decorated windows in the chancel. The double two-storied chamber at the side of the north transept consists of a priest's room with a chapel below. The grounds of the Priory at the back of the church are very lovely, the river forming the boundary on one side. Amesbury town is pleasant and even picturesque, and the Avon in its immediate neighbourhood may be described as beautiful. It is the nearest place to Stonehenge in which accommodation may be had and is also a good centre for the exploration of the Plain. The western road runs in the direction of Stonehenge. On the crown of the hill to the right, just before reaching West Amesbury, the so-called "Vespasian's Camp" is seen. This is undoubtedly a prehistoric earthwork.
The description of Salisbury Plain in the Ingoldsby Legends is hardly accurate now:
"Not a shrub nor a tree, Not a bush can we see, No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no styles, Much less a house or a cottage for miles."
The usual accompaniment of the chalk—small "tufts" of foliage, that become spinneys when close at hand, dot the surface of the great plateau. Green, becoming yellow in the middle distance and toward the horizon french-grey, are the prevailing hues of the Plain, but at times when huge masses of cloud cast changing shadows on the short sward beneath, the colours are kaleidoscopic in their bewildering change. This immense table-land, from which all the chalk hills of England take their eastward way, covers over three-fifths of Wiltshire if we include that northern section usually called the Marlborough Downs.
We now approach the mysterious Stones that have caused more conjecture and wonder than any work of man in these islands or in Europe and of which more would-be descriptive rubbish has been written in a highfalutin strain than of any other memorial of the past. Such phrases as "majestic temple of our far-off ancestors," "stupendous conception of a dead civilization" and the like, can only bring about a feeling of profound disappointment when Stonehenge is actually seen. To all who experience such disappointment the writer would strongly urge a second or third pilgrimage. Come to the Stones on a gloomy day in late October or early March when the surface of the great expanse of the Plain reflects, as water would, the leaden lowering skies. Then perhaps the tragic mystery of the place will fire the imagination as no other scene the wide world over could. Stonehenge is unique whichever way one looks at it. In its age, its uncouth savage strength, and its secretiveness. That it will hold that secret to the end of time, notwithstanding the clever and plausible guesses of archaeologist and astronomer, is almost beyond any doubt, and it is well that it should be so.
The appearance of Stonehenge has been likened to a herd of elephant browsing on the Plain. The simile is good and is particularly applicable to its aspect from the Amesbury road—the least imposing of the approaches. The straight white highway, and the fact that the Stones are a little below the observer, detract very much from the impressiveness of the scene. The usual accompaniments of a visit, a noisy and chattering crowd of motorists, eager to rush round the enclosure quickly, to purchase a packet of postcards and be off; the hut for the sale of the cards, and the absurdly incongruous, but (alas!) necessary, policeman, go far to spoil the visit for the more reverent traveller. But if he will go a little way to the south and watch the gaunt shapes against the sky for a time and thus realize their utter remoteness from that stream of evanescent mortality beneath, the unknown ages that they have stood here upon the lonely waste, the dynasties, nay, the very races, that have come and conquered and gone, and the almost certainty that the broad metalled highway which passes close to them will in turn disappear and give place, while they still stand, to the turf of the great green expanse around; then the awe that surrounds Stonehenge will be felt and understood.
The early aspect of Stonehenge was far more elaborate than as we see it to-day, and the avenues that led to the inner circles and the smaller and outer rings have to a large extent disappeared. The stones are enclosed in a circular earthwork 300 feet across. The outer circle of trilithons, 100 feet in diameter, is composed of monoliths of sandstone originally four feet apart and thirty in number. Inside this circle is another of rough unhewn stones of varying shapes and sizes. Within this again, forming a kind of "holy place," are two ellipses—the outer of trilithons five in number and the inner of blue stones of the same geological formation as the rough stones of the outer circle. Of these there were originally nineteen.
Near the centre is the so-called "altar stone," over fifteen feet long; in a line with this, through the opening of the ellipse, is the "Friar's Heel," a monolith standing outside the circles. The larger stones or "sarsens" are natural to the Marlborough Downs, but the unhewn or "blue" stones are mysterious. They are composed of a kind of igneous rock not found anywhere near Wiltshire. A suggestion by Professor Judd is that they are ice-borne boulders accidentally deposited on the Plain during the southward drift of the great ice cap. One of the sarsen stones is stained with copper oxide, and this fact has been taken to point to Stonehenge being erected somewhere in the Bronze Age—that is, not longer ago than 2000 B.C. Excavations about twenty years ago brought to light a number of stone tools, fragments of pottery, coins and bones. Belonging to a long period of time, the finds were inconclusive. It is quite possible that the ring of rough blue stones were erected by a primitive race of stone men and that a continuous tradition of sanctity clung to the spot until, in the time of those heirs and successors of theirs who used bronze weapons and were acquainted with the rudiments of engineering, the imposing temple that we call Stonehenge came into being.
It will be well at this point to make brief reference to the interpretation placed on Stonehenge by various writers. Henry of Huntingdon (1150) calls it Stanhenges, and terms it the second wonder of England, but professes entire ignorance of its purpose and marvels at the method of its construction. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150) ascribes its origin to the magic of Merlin who, at the instance of Aurelius Ambrosius, directed the invasion of Ireland under Uther Pendragon to obtain possession of the standing stones called the "Giants' Dance at Killaraus." Victory being with the invaders, the stones were taken and transported across the seas with the greatest ease with Merlin's help, and placed on Salisbury Plain as a memorial to the dead of Britain fallen in battle. Giraldus Cambrensis, Robert of Gloucester and Leland all give a similar explanation. About 1550, in Speed's History of Britain and Stow's Annals, Merlin and the invasion of Ireland are dropped and sole credit given to Ambrosius for the erection. Thomas Fuller (1645) ridicules tradition and consider the stones to be artificial and probably made of sand (!) on the spot. Inigo Jones about the same time attributes the erection to the Romans. His master, James I, having taken a philosophic interest in the Stones, had desired him to make some pronouncement upon them. This monarch's grandson, in his flight, is said to have stopped and essayed to count the stones, with the usual result on the second trial. Pepys a short time after went "single to Stonehenge, over the Plain and some great hills even to fright us. Come thither and find them as prodigious as any tales I ever heard of them, and worth going this journey to see, God knows what their use was! they are hard to tell but may yet be told."
About the middle of the eighteenth century the Druid temple legend began to gain ground and many great men gave support to their interpretation; it is not yet an exploded idea. Stukely, the archaeological writer, gives a definite date—460 B.C.—as that of their erection, and Dr. Johnson, writing to Mrs. Thrale, says:—"It is, in my opinion, to be referred to the earliest habitations of the island as a druidical monument of, at least, two thousand years, probably the most ancient work of man upon the island." In the last part of this sentence the great doctor either forgets, or shows his ignorance of, the antiquities at Avebury. Sir Richard Hoare, at the close of the century, is equally convinced that this explanation is the right one. Other theories current about this time were—that it was a monument to four hundred British princes slain by Hengist (472); the grave of Queen Boadicea; or a Phoenician temple; even a Danish origin was ascribed to Stonehenge. Perhaps the most curious fact connected with the literary history of Stonehenge is that it is not mentioned in the Roman itineraries or by Bede or any other Saxon writer.
In 1824 the following interesting article by H. Wansey appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine.
"In my early days I frequently visited Stonehenge to make observations at sunrise as well as by starlight. I noticed that the lower edge of the impost of the outer circle forms a level horizontal line in the heavens, equi-distant from the earth, to the person standing near the centre of the building, about 15 degrees above the horizon on all sides.
"Stonehenge stands on rather sloping ground; the uprights of the outer circle are nearly a foot taller on the lower ground or western side than they are on the eastern, purposely to keep the horizontal level of the impost, which marks great design and skill. The thirty uprights of the outer circle are not found exactly of equal distances, but the imposts (so correctly true on their under bed) are each of them about 7 cubits in length, making 210 cubits the whole circle.
"If a person stands before the highest leaning-stone, between it and the altar stone looking eastward, he will see the pyramidal stone called the Friar's Heel, coinciding with the top of Durrington Hill, marking nearly the place where the sun rises on the longest day. This was the observation of a Mr. Warltire, who delivered lectures on Stonehenge at Salisbury (1777), and who had drawn a meridian line on one of the stones. Mr. Warltire asserted that the stone of the trilithons and of the outer circle are the stone of the country, and that he had found the place from whence they were taken, about fourteen miles from the spot northward, somewhere near Urchfont.
"If the person so standing turns to his left hand, he will find a groove in one of the 6-foot pillars from top to bottom, which (in the lapse of so many ages, and swelled by the alternate heat and moisture of two thousand years, has lost its shape) might have contained in it a scale of degrees for measuring; and the stone called the altar[3] would have answered to draw those diagrams on, and this scale of degrees was well placed for use in such a case, for one turning himself to the left, and his right hand holding a compass, could apply it most conveniently. With all this apparatus the motions of the heavenly bodies might have been accurately marked and eclipses calculated, a knowledge of which, Caesar says, they possessed in his time.
"Wood and Dr. Stukeley both make the inner oval to consist of nineteen stones, answering to the ancient Metonic Cycle of nineteen years, at the end of which the sun and the moon are in the same relative situation as at the beginning, when indeed the same almanack will do again.
"In my younger days I have visited Stonehenge by starlight, and found, on applying my sight from the top of the 6-foot pillars of the inner oval and looking at the high trilithons, I could mark the places of the planets and the stars in the heavens, so as to measure distances by the corners and angles of them....
"It is very remarkable that no barrow or tumulus exists on the east side, where the sun (the great object of ancient worship) first appears."
[3] "Dr. Smith says that he has tried a bit of this stone, and found that it would not stand fire. It is, therefore, very improbable that it should have been used for burnt sacrifices."