Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  I must close this account of hawking with part of “Mr Falconer’s” panegyric of his craft, in The Compleat Angler:

  “And first, for the element that I use to trade in, which is the air, an element of more worth than weight, an element that doubtless exceeds both the earth and water; for though I sometimes deal in both, yet the air is most properly mine, I and my hawks use that, and it yields us most recreation: it stops not the high soaring of my noble, generous falcon; in it she ascends to such an height, as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are not able to reach to; their bodies are too gross for such high elevations: in the air my troops of hawks soar up on high, and when they are lost in the sight of men, then they attend upon and converse with the gods.”

  The name of Isaak Walton brings us to fishing, another famous Wiltshire sport, for there are in all England no trout streams more loved by fishermen than the Kennet, the two Avons, the Wylye, the Nadder and the Stour. Isaak Walton was not a native of Wiltshire, though he lived much in the county and his son was a rector of Poulshot. Many of his fishing scenes, therefore, describe Wiltshire rivers, though he does not specify any one of them more definitely than “a little river at Salisbury”.

  This is the atmosphere Isaak Walton finds on the river bank, or does he bring it there?

  “And first, I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found to be a real truth, that the very sitting by the river’s side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will invite an angler to it.…

  “The late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton, a man with whom I have often fished and conversed, said … ‘ ’twas an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent:’ for angling was, after tedious study, ‘a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness:’ and ‘that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.’ Indeed, my friend, you will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings attending upon it.”

  Do not these words recall, even today, the very scent of the Wylye or the Nadder river banks, in spite of the petrol which has so disturbed the fish in these waters?

  But the twentieth century has found a new tempo even for the record of a day in the life of a fisherman. In a book entitled Ditchampton Farm this is how A. G. Street describes an adventure of a fellow farmer-fisherman, who

  “one day was fishing a few yards upstream of the bridge over the river Avon as it crosses under the main street of Salisbury. He was standing on a small island at the confluence of three streams; and by the approved dry-fly method he’d caught a nice brace of trout, each about a pound and a half. But he wanted something bigger, so he cast into a deep pool where some trencher-fed monsters were known to lurk. Suddenly he found himself well stuck into a trout that subsequently turned the scale at six pounds ten ounces. He had this fish on a light fly rod, and on a cast tapering to 3X, so he had his hands full. In a few moments, a small crowd had collected on the bridge to watch the fun. But Salisbury was a busy city in wartime, especially on a Saturday; and soon local folk, soldiers from every part of the British Empire, soldiers from America, soldiers on leave, airmen from everywhere including Poland and Czechoslovakia, had all decided that preparing for the invasion of Europe was a slow business compared with seeing how an Englishman catches a fish.… Soon transport drivers on the outskirts of Salisbury were asking what in the world was blocking the traffic, but the fisherman neither knew nor cared for any of their questioning. Suddenly a perspiring policeman pushed his way through the crowd, and yelled to Jackie to cut his line and let the fish go.

  ‘Oh ah,’ said Jackie. ‘ What do you take me for?’

  He continued to fish; the crowd continued to grow; and the traffic hold-up became beyond belief. The bobby now entered some solicitors’ offices nearby and proceeded to deal with my friend at closer quarters, from an open bow-window overhanging the river.

  ‘I order you to cut the line,’ he yelled.

  Jackie went on playing his fish.

  ‘I charge you with creating a disturbance. One person has been knocked down already. Somebody will be killed in a minute.’

  ‘Your worry, not mine,’ said Jackie. ‘I’ve got plenty to see to here.’

  ‘Isn’t a human being’s life worth more to you than that fish?’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ said Jackie, and then the fish leapt out into the sunlight, and the crowd sighed Ooooh.

  The policeman then charged my friend with being a public nuisance. This stung Jackie.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘ I’ve got a fishing licence. I’ve permission to fish this water. I’m free, white, a civilian, and over twenty-one. I’m pursuing my lawful occasions. Why interfere with me, just because you can’t control those folk there who are creating the nuisance? If my tackle holds, I’m landing this chap.’

  Those who heard this speech cheered. The policeman muttered threats. Drivers for miles round cursed. The sun shone. And Jackie carried on with his fishing. In three-quarters of an hour the fish was getting tired; and then—at the moment of being netted—the net broke, and once again the crowd breathed Ooooh. Whereupon a girl secretary, who had taken the policeman’s place at the solicitors’ window, threw out the waste-paper basket, and the fish was triumphantly landed in that.”

  Now what would Isaak Walton say to this? It was certainly a morning’s fishing, though the Fisherton Street “river’s side” was hardly “ the fittest place for contemplation”.

  Salisbury Plain is the ideal place for training racehorses, and there are many famous training stables in the county of Wiltshire. Every pack of foxhounds has its point-to-point meeting, and this kind of semi-amateur racing is the kind most congenial to the Wiltshire disposition. There is only one regular race-course, on Salisbury Raceplain. Aubrey says:

  “Henry Earle of Pembroke (1570–1601) instituted Salisbury Race; which hath since continued very famous, and beneficial to the city. He gave … pounds to the corporation of Sarum to provide every yeare, in the first Thursday after Mid-Lent Sunday, a silver bell, which about 1630, was turned into a silver cup of the same value. This race is of two sorts: the greater, fourteen miles, beginnes at Whitesheet and ends on Harnham-hill, which is very seldom runn, not once perhaps in twenty yeares. The shorter begins at a place called the Start, at the end of the edge of the north downe of the farme of Broad Chalke, and ends at the standing at the hare-warren, built by William Earle of Pembroke, and is four miles from the Start.

  “It is certain that Peacock used to runn the four-miles course in five minutes and a little more; … he was first Sir Thomas Thynne’s of Long-leate; who valued him at 1,000 pounds. Philip Earle of Pembroke gave 5 livres but to have a sight of him: at last his lordship had him; I thinke by gift. Peacock was a bastard barb. He was the most beautifull horse ever seen in this last age, and was as fleet as handsome. He dyed about 1650.

  Here lies the man whose horse did gaine

  The bell in race on Salisbury plaine;

  Reader, I know not whether needs it,

  You or your horse rather to reade it.”

  It is not only in racing that Wiltshire prefers amateur to professional sport. The same may be said of cricket and of other games; and this is why Wiltshire has never been what is called a “First-Class Cricketing County”. Here, village cricket is the thing; and throughout the nineteenth century cricket matches between two neighbouring villages were the great events of most neighbourhoods. The players on each side were probably a young farmer or two, a couple of public-school boys home for the holidays at the Manor House or the Rectory, and a handful of farm workers. The excitement of these games was beyond compare, and I well remember going home for a late tea after scoring since eleven o’clock in the morning, to be recalled a few minutes later because “Pilditch” was “ hitting fours”. Who could miss such a moment? The visiting team used to t
ravel in horse-brakes over the often very steep hills which separate the Wiltshire valleys one from the other. The team from Barford St Martin has been known to dismount en masse at the foot of the steep hill from Wilton to the Chalke Valley in order to push the brake “ now containing only cricket bats” over the ridge to Bishopstone. Sport must have lost much of its attraction since it now demands of its devotees no such physical exercise.

  Village cricket has apparently been killed by the football pool, which now seems to be the nearest to which country people can get to a game which is reputed to be the most popular sport in England.

  Cricket was first played in Wiltshire while George III was King, when matches were played at Salisbury, Westbury, Stockton, Everley and Pewsey. South Wilts even played All England at Bemerton in 1854, and won by three runs; and the county played the M.C.C. at Lords in the same year, winning by an innings and sixty-nine runs.

  There was a never-to-be-forgotten cricket match in 1869 at Marlborough, when no less a man than W. G. Grace came to play against the college, and was quickly bowled out by a very small boy for a very small score. The organist was no sportsman and he had already chosen the hymn for the evening service, to be amazed at the enormous chorus which broke into the line, “ The scanty triumphs Grace hath won”!

  Within the last fifty years or so a certain number of golf clubs have been rounded in the county, but the lie of the land is not really suitable for this Scottish import, and both the grounds and the players want a good deal of doctoring to fit them for the game. On the other hand, the old English game of bowls finds the Wiltshire turf absolutely right for its greens, and in the county bowls may be called the official municipal game. It might be feared that a game laying such a stress upon bias would not be the best one to encourage impartiality in our local rulers; but no one can watch town councillors playing bowls without being struck by their calmness, fairness and concentration, as they take their little measures to decide within a quarter of an inch which player is nearest to the jack.

  Chapter Nine

  ANTIQUITIES

  AT the present day the mention of the county of Wilts evokes in most people the idea of its antiquities—of Stonehenge, of Avebury or of Old Sarum; but this is a modern impression of the county. For many hundreds of years Stonehenge seems to have been forgotten altogether. Hecatæus of Abdera, a contemporary of Alexander the Great and of Ptolemy, is supposed to have alluded to Stonehenge in his history of the Hyperboreans, who according to the Oxford English Dictionary were a happy people living in sunshine and plenty beyond the North Wind, and Hecatæus says that they “inhabited an island as large as Sicily, lying towards the north, over against the country of the Celts.… In this island was a round temple which was dedicated to Apollo.” If that means Stonehenge, this first mention of it takes us back twenty-four centuries, but after this somewhat vague statement Stonehenge disappears into the clouds. The Romans never mentioned it, although a Roman road crosses the county not very far away. Geoffrey of Monmouth, about 1130, brings it into history when he describes Merlin bringing the stones by magic from Ireland. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it was evidently known among antiquarians in other countries, though not in England. Langtoft illustrates this by his anecdote of the “Wander Wit of Wiltshire” who,

  “rambling to Rome to gaze at Antiquities, and there skrewing himself into the company of Antiquarians, they entreated him to illustrate unto them that famous monument in the country called Stonage. His answer was that he had never seen, scarce ever heard of it, whereupon they kicked him out of doors and bad him goe home and see Stoneage. And I wish that all such Episcopal cocks as slight these admired stones and scrape for barley comes of vanity out of foreigne dunghills, might be handled, or rather footed, as he was.”

  English people have often thought that they must go abroad to see sights, and here was the Wiltshire wander wit six hundred years ago travelling to Rome rather than to Salisbury Plain to see an “Antiquitie”.

  Stonehenge seems to have excited very little interest afterwards till the seventeenth century, and even then those people who visited it had little respect for its preservation. John Evelyn says in 1654 that “the stone is so exceedingly hard that all my strength with a hammer could not break a fragment”, and Aubrey reports that “it is generally averred about here that pieces or powder of these stones, putt into their wells, doe drive away the toades, with which their wells are much infected, and this course they use still”. However, during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Stonehenge excited more and more the attention of historians, and by now a great deal is known about it.

  The immense size of the Plain reduces the apparent size of the monument; and most people are disappointed when they see it for the first time. The sense of its immensity grows upon one as one stands beneath the great trilithons. At present Stonehenge consists of a shallow outer ditch three hundred feet in diameter, within which there is now indicated by white marks the existence of a large circle of fifty-six stones which are not in place today. This circle is called the circle of the “Aubrey Holes”, because John Aubrey indicated them in his plan of 1666. In his day he says that some of the holes were visible as small depressions, but for some centuries after that no sign of them appeared on the surface. Probably he saw them in a very dry summer. Anyhow, the Aubrey Holes were a target for the wit of Aubrey’s critics who delighted to point out his credulousness. But in 1920 they were silenced from the air. Mr Crawford, flying over Stonehenge, reported that he could see a circle indicated by patches of earth which had evidently been disturbed. The grass grew in a different colour to that on the natural surface of the Plain. He photographed what he saw. The Aubrey Holes came to light. They have since been excavated, and it is now proved that this outer circle did once contain “blue stones” like the smaller ones which are now to be seen at Stonehenge.

  Stonehenge itself stands some distance within this circle. It consists of the remains of a circle of Sarsen stones which originally had lintels thrown across them, making a continuous bridge all round. Within this came a circle of small blue stones, then a gigantic horseshoe consisting of five great trilithons. Again within was another horseshoe of small separate blue stones, and in the centre a recumbent stone of a different character to the rest, the altar stone. The great temple in this desolate windy spot is now in such a ruined condition that the original plan is hard to follow, but in many ways this noble ruin is perhaps more impressive than it was when it was complete. The first questions that occur to the visitor are: (i) How were these stones brought to this place? (ii) How were they erected and put into position? (iii) What was the purpose of their erection? (iv) How old is Stonehenge?

  Till about fifty years ago it seemed that no answer could even be attempted to these questions, but the combination of the air, the spade and the brain has brought the solution nearer. There is one thing that all the world knows about Stonehenge, and that is that on the longest day in the year the sun rises in such a position that the shadow of a stone, the Heel Stone, standing well outside the circle is thrown upon the recumbent or altar stone in its middle. But this orientation is not now quite correct. It is a few degrees out. In 1901 Sir Norman Lockyer, Astronomer-General, calculated that according to the gradual tilt of the earth during the centuries, the orientation would have been correct at some time between 1500 and 1900 B.C. The age of Stonehenge seemed then to be fixed, but the archæologists were not satisfied until their excavations had resulted in the discovery of tools and various objects left in the holes under the stones which pointed to a date between 1800 and 1600 B.C. It has been suggested that the outer circle of small stones which are now known to have come from the Prescelly Mountains in Pembrokeshire were brought to Salisbury Plain a thousand years before the main temple. Pembrokeshire contains several similar circles and this circle may have been carried off as a trophy of some victory. If this is the case, the original Stonehenge was one large circle of comparatively small stones. Where are those ston
es today? Their number practically equals the foreign stones now to be seen within the temple itself, and an interesting theory is that the original stones were moved when the final temple was built and put in their present position.

  As to how the stones were brought to Stonehenge, we must remember that the enormous Sarsen stones are natives of Wiltshire, though not of this immediate neighbourhood, and their transport would not be beyond the powers of people with unlimited slave labour at command. The stones from Pembrokeshire offer a more difficult problem. It has sometimes been thought that they were brought round by sea, and were conveyed up the Avon to a point a very few miles distant where a single foreign stone appears to have been left by the water’s edge.

  The process of erecting the stones is extremely interesting if we accept the theory so very well described by Mr Frank Stevens, Curator of the Salisbury Museum. He says:

  “A slanting trench was cut with the deer’s horn picks through the earth and chalk, having at its deeper end a perpendicular chalk face against which the Sarsen could rest when upright. Rubble and chalk were cleared away, and the stone carefully slid down the plane to its foundation. To raise it, now that its base rested against a solid wall of chalk, was not a great matter. The same ropes of hide and tree trunks which had served for its transport would again have come into play. Slowly it would be levered up, and packings or wedges of wood or stone inserted. Thus inch by inch, probably, it rose higher and higher.… Blocks of Sarsen were packed beneath it to equalise the bearing, and then the excavation was filled in with chalk and rubble, which doubtless was well rammed down and consolidated with the big sixty-pound mauls. Among the packing of chalk and rubble were found a considerable number of the rough implements already referred to.”