Wiltshire

by Edith Olivier

  As to the purpose for which Stonehenge was built, this speaks from the sky around. Like Dr Vaughan Cornish, we should turn from the stones to scan the horizon. Then we see the tremendous spiritual significance of this great temple, and can say with Henry Vaughan:

  I saw Eternity the other night,

  Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,

  All calm, as it was bright:—

  And found beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,

  Driven by the spheres,

  Like a vast shadow moved; in which the World

  And all her train were hurled.

  There is a passage in Lavengro which seems to speak the whole truth about Stonehenge:

  “And as I still sat there, I heard the noise of bells, and presently a large number of sheep came browzing past the circle of stones; two or three entered, and grazed upon what they could find, and soon a man also entered the circle at the northern side.

  ‘Early here, sir,’ said the man, who was tall, and dressed in a dark green slop, and had all the appearance of a shepherd; ‘a traveller, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am a traveller; are these sheep yours?’

  ‘They are, sir; that is, they are my master’s. A strange place this, sir,’ said he, looking at the stones; ‘ever here before?’

  ‘Never in body, frequently in mind.’

  ‘Heard of the stones, I suppose; no wonder—all the people of the plain talk of them.’

  ‘What do the people of the plain say of them?’

  ‘Why, they say—How did they ever come here?’

  ‘Do they not suppose them to have been brought?’

  ‘Who should have brought them?’

  ‘I have read that they were brought by many thousand men.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Ireland.’

  ‘How did they bring them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what did they bring them for?’

  ‘To form a temple, perhaps.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘A place to worship God in.’

  ‘A strange place to worship God in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It has no roof.’

  ‘Yes, it has.’

  ‘Where?’ said the man looking up.

  ‘What do you see above you?’

  ‘The sky.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well!’

  ‘Have you anything to say?’

  ‘How did these stones come here?’

  ‘Are there other stones like these on the plains?’ said I.

  ‘None; and yet there are plenty of strange things on these downs.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Strange heaps, and barrows, and great walls of earth built on the tops of hills.’

  ‘Do the people of the plain wonder how they came there?’

  ‘They do not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They were raised by hands.’

  ‘And these stones?’

  ‘How did they ever come here?’

  ‘I wonder whether they are here?’ said I.

  ‘These stones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So sure as the world,’ said the man; ‘ and, as the world, they will stand as long.’ ”

  Here are two reactions to the vision of Stonehenge, and it cannot be a mere accident that both of them evoked the memory of some great natural and spiritual religion. The scholar and the stranger who “had all the appearance of a shepherd” reach the same conclusion. This must be the answer to the question, what was the purpose of those who erected Stonehenge?

  A few miles along the road between Amesbury and Netheravon the traveller passes a very curious site. It looks like a game in which a very tidy child has built a small replica of Stonehenge. This is Woodhenge. Twenty years ago neither the name nor what it stands for were known to the world, and its discovery was a very interesting one. It was described by Squadron-Leader Insall, V. C., in the letter which appeared in Antiquity in March 1927. He wrote this:

  “I was flying a Sopwith Snipe on 12th December 1925, at about 2,000 feet over Stonehenge, when I noticed a circle with white chalk marks in the centre near Durrington Walls. Stonehenge was visible at the same time, and the two sites looked similar from that height. I photographed it shortly afterwards; result—white chalk marks in the plough. Returning late one evening as the sun was setting I noticed there was a distinct depression inside the outer circle (the ditch), and a gradually rising mound in the centre, both of which were revealed by the shadows. Having been told that it was only a “ mutilated disc barrow”, and having looked it up in the Wiltshire Archæological Magazine, I watched to see what the crops would reveal. The only mutilation visible was caused by the plough. In July, when the wheat was well up over the site, there was no further doubt. Five or six or perhaps even seven closely-set rings of spots appeared, and were photographed. I climbed on to a hayrick in the same field a few days later, and although a few dark patches could be seen in the standing wheat, no pattern was visible, and they would have passed unnoticed. From the air the details of the site were as clear as shown on the photograph, if not clearer.”

  This unexpected revelation sent the Wiltshire archæologists hastening to the spot with their picks and shovels. The site as seen today reveals the result of their excavations. The white marks seen by Squadron-Leader Insall were the traces of wooden posts which had long since disappeared from the surface but had left their perishing remains in the earth. The original erection must obviously have been very similar to Stonehenge, although on a smaller scale. The two erections cannot have been independent of one another. They have a close relationship.

  The question as to which preceded the other has not yet been cleared up. Doubtless Stonehenge has a much more magnificent conception than Woodhenge. It has a new imagination, a new architectural power, though this, of course, is largely due to the finer material of which it was constructed. Long before the discovery of Woodhenge some students had arrived at the idea that Stonehenge must have been preceded by some experiment in wood. If this were so, here are the remains of the experiment. At the point in Woodhenge which corresponds to the site of the altar stone in Stonehenge traces of what appears to have been a ceremonial burial were discovered. The skeleton of a child was still to be seen.

  The small concrete blocks which now indicate the position of the vanished wooden posts cannot be called impressive; but they show the original plan of the erection, and there is little more to be said about it. As it now stands, a picture of it might appear to represent a copy of Stonehenge carried out in miniature to wear as a pendant round your neck.

  From this miniature version of Stonehenge we must now turn to Avebury, which Aubrey pronounced as “ exceeding Stonehenge in size as a Cathedral exceeds a parish church”. The fact that the village of Avebury is built in and about the ancient monument takes away from it the impression which is given by Stonehenge. It has lost its original character of imposing isolation. Also, during the centuries since Aubrey and Stukeley described the place, a good deal of what they saw had been lost to sight until it was rediscovered from the air. The aviator’s view has largely restored to us what the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century students saw and described.

  The actual temple is enclosed in a stupendous earthwork, the outer mound of which is thirty feet in height and the ditch thirty feet in depth, while the whole sloping side of the embankment measures no less than seventy feet. Within this great enclosure there stood originally two large “ temples”, each formed of two circles of stones. From this double temple Aubrey and Stukeley reported that two avenues started, each being about a mile in length. One went to the top of Overton Hill and ended in a stone circle called the “ Sanctuary”, while the other went towards Beckhampton. Till early in this century these avenues had entirely disappeared, and the wiseacres of the nineteenth century considered this wider picture of Avebury to be merely a figment of the imag
inations of Aubrey and Stukeley. These two ancient archæologists have now been triumphantly vindicated, thanks to the aerial photographs and to the excavations of Mr and Mrs Cunnington, and above all to the enthusiasm of Mr Keiller.

  Stukeley’s theory was that Avebury was a monument built for the purpose of serpent worship and this theory is not now in fashion, but his picture of Avebury as in itself representing a gigantic serpent gives as good an impression of its appearance as can be desired. He thought that the circles at Avebury looked like the coiled body of a serpent, with the Beckhampton Avenue forming its tail, the Kennet one its neck, while its head was represented by the Sanctuary on Overton Hill.

  Till 1930 the Sanctuary had entirely disappeared since the millfield where it stood was ploughed up in 1724 in order to gain, as Stukeley said, “ a little dirty-profit”. Then, in 1930, Mrs Cunnington was struck afresh by a chance remark of Stukeley’s. This was that it was possible to see the serpent’s head on Overton Down when standing at the tail near Fox’s Covert to the west of Beckhampton. Mrs Cunnington placed herself at the crucial spot, and then she found that there was only one point in the millfield which could be seen from there. But how to identify this, after walking from one place to the other? A bright idea came to her. She counted the telegraph posts between the two positions. This seemed to promise to be most explicit, and indeed it was; for on the exact spot which the telegraph posts indicated they excavated and found the holes in which the two circles of stones had originally stood. But more than that. Concentric with these holes were six more quite unexpected circles of holes which had originally held wooden posts.

  The skyline of Avebury has now been acquired by the National Trust. Mr Keiller, the generous archæologist who owns the village and the site, has replaced as many as possible of the stones that originally formed the Kennet avenue, and he has taken away some of the many trees that have grown up on the earthwork. The vast circle of the temple now stands like a miraculous ring which might have been forged for Woden to wear. Both Avebury and Stonehenge have a grandeur of design which we seem to have outgrown since we learnt to look upon Nature as mostly something which we can use for our own convenience. This vastness in its original conception has returned to Avebury since the great green ring once again stands in its rightful setting on the horizon.

  In Colt Hoare’s Ancient Wiltshire there is a drawing of Mount Silbury which makes it look, even more than it does today, like a pyramid made of chalk, the soft Wiltshire stone which weathers so gently into curves. Silbury, the largest artificial mound in this island, stands about a mile from Avebury, and is even more mysterious than the great temple itself. It has never disclosed the secrets of its date, its purpose or its builders. The nearest we can get to its date is to say that it is “pre-Roman”, because the Roman road nearby, which in its straight course would naturally have passed through it, was diverted to pass it. But this does not tell much. It merely leaves us with all the prehistoric ages to play with. Some attempts at excavation have been made in the enormous surface of this mountain, but these are even more hopeless than looking for a needle in a bundle of hay. It is like peering through a tiny needle case into the bundle, for each excavation must follow a definite line of shaft, tunnel or trench, and this is a hopeless limitation on the surface which covers over five acres of ground and is a hundred and thirty feet high. So till now Silbury has lost none of its ancient mystery, and long may it preserve this.

  Another picture in Hoare’s Ancient Wiltshire is one of Merlin’s Mount at Marlborough, a few miles from Silbury, compared with which it is on a very miniature scale. It only occupies one and a half acres of ground, and is only sixty feet high, but it shows traces of having been a more elaborate structure in some ways than the great parent mount.

  These earthworks have a character of their own, but the county is full of camps, barrows, dykes, trackways and the remains of ancient villages. Most of these are on the downs where the earliest inhabitants lived, and many books have been written about them. The only one which must here be mentioned is Old Sarum. This is easily accessible from Salisbury, and its known history can be studied far more easily than can those earthworks which still remain ancient camps of which little more has been discovered. Old Sarum was a great military position of the Romans, although they were by no means responsible for its original creation. But they saw its importance, and seven Roman roads run out of it. The Saxons took possession of it when they arrived in Britain, and later it was a Norman fortress. All this is comparatively modern history, but the beauty of the site still speaks of that unknown race which originally founded practically all the prehistoric monuments of Wiltshire. We leave it, as the thirteenth-century Englishmen left it, looking down upon its successor, Salisbury, lying beneath it in the valley.

  Chapter Ten

  SALISBURY

  IN 1722 Stukeley described how he travelled from Shaftesbury to Salisbury, by the old High Road which he calls the “ ten mile course”, and of which he writes to Lord Pembroke, “a traveller is highly indebted to your Lordship for adding to his pleasure and advantage in reviving the Roman method of placing a numbered stone at every mile”. From Edgar’s Grave above Bishopstone he says, with one of his characteristically exact topographical touches of detail, that he could see “ three Cities and three Cathedrals at once, Wilton, Old and New Sarum”. Three cathedrals in one coup d’œeil! It must have been an astonishing spectacle. It is surprising to learn that as late as the eighteenth century the Norman cathedral at Old Sarum was still conspicuous in the landscape. Today, both that and the great abbey church at Wilton have vanished, but Salisbury Cathedral remains. From Stukeley’s vantage point it is now, in its isolation, even more beautiful than when he saw it.

  Wiltshire possesses many famous buildings—great houses and noble churches; but none of them stands so “ high to see” as the Cathedral lying low in the marshes of Mary’s meadow at the junction of five rivers where the site is as flat as the “ palm of a man’s hand”. Low as its foundation lies (it has been called the Sink of Wiltshire), it is the one conspicuous object to meet the eye for many miles round. It dominates the county. Coming into Wiltshire by the way the Romans came, from Blandford in Dorset, the spire springs from the undulations of that long straight road, with a sudden surprise, giving an uplift to the heart. There are only two houses built on high ground within a radius of twenty miles round Salisbury—Trafalgar and the remains of Fonthill Abbey. From each of these the spire is the one great achievement of architecture in sight. Coming from the New Forest, either by Redlynch or by Landford, the Cathedral seems to stand alone to meet the traveller as he looks down into the great vale; and Martensell, the hill like a giant lion couchant at the edge of the Marlborough Downs, has its own sight of Salisbury spire which soars to the level of every hilltop in the county. And in all these views the Cathedral appears to stand alone. It is not the culminating point of a city, for the city cannot be seen from a distance. Salisbury Cathedral is isolated and indifferent when seen from afar. It stood there before New Sarum followed it, and it seems barely to be aware of the charming city which clusters around it. It looks in one direction only. It soars heavenward.

  And this cold spirituality is the first quality to strike one in the interior. The great west doors open on to the vast colourless area of nave, from the uttermost extreme of which may sometimes be heard the far-off intoning of a minor canon saying his office, or the inarticulate melody of choirboys’ voices as they “truly and indifferently minister” to the glory of God.

  In spite of this first impression of remoteness, the Cathedral is still, as it has ever been, the rallying point of the city of Salisbury, if not of the county of Wilts. In this, as in other ways, it is very unlike Old Sarum which for nearly two centuries had been the arena of petty squabbles. No one was happy there. Peter of Blois, as quoted by Hatcher, describes the old site as

  “barren, dry, and solitary, and the church as a captive on the hill where it was built, like the Ark of God in th
e profane house of Baal. Let us in God’s name,” he exclaimed, “ descend into the Plain. There are rich champaign fields and fertile vallies, abounding in the fruits of the earth, and watered by the living stream. There is a seat for the Virgin Patroness of our church, to which the world cannot produce a parallel.”

  The chief squabbles of those days were between the ecclesiastical and the military authorities, and this friction culminated at the Rogationtide of 1217. Then, as was their custom, the Cathedral body went in procession singing their litanies through the fields of the Bishop’s manors of Milford and Stratford, and when they returned home the soldiers had played them a rough practical joke. The city gates were shut and the churchmen had to spend the night outside.

  Bishop Poore was away or this could hardly have happened; but when he heard of the outrage he declared, “ I will labour earnestly to build an abode and a church away from the King’s castle, and removed from the royal power.”

  The problem was to decide on the best site, and the solving of this is told, as well as anywhere, in the legend of how the Bishop himself stood on the ramparts and drew a bow at a venture, calling upon God to show him where a new church should be. His arrow fell into a field called Mirrifield, part of his own estate; and here, in March 1219, he began to build a wooden chapel. So swiftly was the work put in hand that on the feast of the Trinity he celebrated mass within its walls. The foundation stones of the great Cathedral itself were laid in April 1220, and it was finally consecrated in 1258.

  The Cathedral and Close of Salisbury are unique. The Cathedral has one rare quality. The body of the church is built throughout in one style, the Early English, and this gives it a purity and a classic grace denied to other English cathedrals, though many of them have longer and more varied histories. Nevertheless, there are at Salisbury three architectural features dating from later than the thirteenth century, two of which are perhaps the most memorable of all. The first is the spire, and without this we can hardly imagine the Cathedral existing. It rises so naturally from the rest of the building that you feel it must have been in the mind of its first planners. Yet it was built nearly a hundred years later, during the episcopate of Robert Wyvill (1329–75), and, unlike the church itself, the Bishop employed a band of professional masons headed by one Richard of Farleigh. The spire is 404 feet high, rising ninety-five yards above the Cathedral roof, and its colossal weight was soon seen to be too much for the building upon which it stood. Mr Dorling, in his history of Salisbury, says graphically: