Join us for a few days touring around Wiltshire, The Cotswolds and Avon with a sneaky dash to Oxfordshire for good measure. Lots of history, stone circles, burial chambers and hill forts amongst other items of interest.
Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.
Monday 27 May 1998. Now, for those of you who have stumbled here by accident and haven't a clue how you got here, Fran and I are on holiday in Wiltshire and on this particular public holiday are at Old Sarum, the fortified town that was abandoned in the 1200s at which point Salisbury was developed.
Those nice chappies at English Heritage had arranged a display of Roman Army tactics and equipment entitled The Might of the Roman Army.
No "might" about it - here they are! The performers for the day were members of four groups: the Ermine Street Guard, Gemina Project (from Holland), Vexillatio Legionis Geminae and The Troop.
They were representing Imperial Roman soldiers from the second half of the first century A.D. You would not want a Glasgow kiss from someone wearing a helmet like that! They are also carrying the Roman javelin. A volley or two of those would thin out the first couple of lines of mad marauding Celts and Picts. Please note that I have myself recognised the tendency of this blog to become a little bloodthirsty over the last couple of entries but we shall soon be back to normal!
The troupe were representing Imperial Roman soldiers from the second half of the first century A.D. This would be the conquering army of Britain, though they were hard pressed by the guerilla tactics of the native tribes. Their equipment and tactics were well fitted to each other though. On the face of it a great hairy Celt, dressed in nothing but a bit of blue paint and beard and swinging a long sword should have no problem dispatching a chap in a skirt with a short sword.
But long swords are best when swung and when two armies are pressed together by weight of numbers there is no room to swing a sword without lopping off your mates' heads... So the short stabbing swords of the Romans were apt to win the day as long as there were enough of them to keep the enemy in front of their shield wall.
We stood on the walls of Old Sarum as they marched around the inner sanctum. Here they are passing the foundations of Old Sarum's cathedral. Its replacement was Salisbury Cathedral but you can tell from this photograph that the original was an impressive size.
The chap in the middle of the front row was blowing away at his instrument, which was a relief as I thought for a moment he was going to suck and vacuum the grass... He didn't get much of a tune from it, but no doubt in its time there were plenty of hard pressed Romans who were glad to hear it announce the arrival of reinforcements!
Once in the arena, the various items of equipment were displayed and explained and demonstrations of tactics were given. One of the best displays that we saw was the use of the shields to form the testudo (the tortoise), with the men totally protected apart from their legs as they ran around the arena in close formation. Yes, you're right - I didn't get a picture of it as they were too far away at the time. But an image search on Google for roman testudo will give you ample example. (Nice bit of wordplay thrown in there for free!)
In the next entry we'll get away from all this warfare and take a look at a more modern Salisbury and cathedral and at what is perhaps the oldest mechanical clock in Europe.
Monday 27 May 1998. Old Sarum - if you know what it is you're looking at - always looks magnificent as you approach it. The ancient hillfort was chosen for its strategic position and commands a view of the surrounding countryside for many miles.
It was a public holiday and we found that there was a visit by the Roman Army who were drilling and displaying. This had two advantages for us: one, we were able to see some of the display and two, when we took time out to explore the site, everyone else was watching the display!
We have a look at the Romans on the next page. Above, we are already standing within the site of the city and looking across to the inner sanctum, the site of the Norman castle.
To get this far there has been a steep climb and we have negotiated (by means of a modern road) the defensive ditches seen above. Imagine running up and down a couple of these, wearing a helmet and carrying sword, shield etc whilst the locals are pelting you with rocks, slingshot, boiling water or oil and nasty pointy things! Before you get to the top you have been hurt and some of your friends are dead. By the time you've got through that ditch the locals have all gone into the inner sanctum, destroying or removing the bridge, and notching a fresh supply of arrows to their bows. If you slip the likelihood is that you will fall onto one of many sharpened stakes and will not be very happy. If you manage to avoid them you will be struck by an idea for putting cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks...
Then you reach the inner sanctum. Ditches fill up with time. This is still deep and treacherous enough to require fencing! At the bottom of the ditch will be sharpened wooden stakes. If you fall going down the side you will be caught on one and have to leave the fun of battle to your mates. On the top of this green bank is a high wooden wall or palisade that must be climbed or broken through once the grassy bank has been climbed. The palisade is lined with unfriendly people. You are starting to invent the term "Bugger this for a game of soldiers..."
Here we see the remains of the royal palace inside the inner sanctum. Immensely strong thick walls of dressed stone over rough rubble and mortar. The ground floor rooms have been packed with earth to ceiling level to make the walls even more impregnable. Knocking a few stones off is not going to make the castle fall down.
The tops of the walls and the narrow windows are full of people shooting the remainder of their arrows and pouring out the heated contents of their plumbing. Over each doorway are death holes. These lead vertically down from rooms above the entrance and down the hole heavy objects or boiling liquid can be dropped onto whoever is trying to batter the door down.
If you get this far you are extremely brassed off... Your commander looks for the castle's sewage system and commands you to crawl through it so you can open the gates from inside... Bear in mind that the opening to the sewerage system is likely to be on at least the first storey so you will need a way of climbing the wall to get into it. It will open directly to the seat above so you have to hope no-one has felt the need.
Sounds fairly horrible doesn't it? Yet most castle seiges either ended because of treachery from within, because the food (or more likely water) ran out in the castle, or because someone had to worm through the sewage outlet into the castle. Once inside, they had to think of a way to either fight off all the guards at the gate or capture a hostage important enough to secure the obediance of the guards.
Happily, they let us in simply through buying a ticket...
Sarum was abandoned in the 13th Century and the nearby city of Salisbury was developed in its stead. The once fine buildings were left to decay in the hilltop fortress, but some walls remain, enabling us to form an accurate picture of how the fortress might have looked in its heyday.
In only one or two places are facing stones left. Elsewhere the walls are the rough undressed stone and mortar, giving a somewhat false picture of how the buildings would have looked.
Looking from the inner sanctum to the wider area of the city, the foundations of Sarum's cathedral can be seen. It is extremely rare (if not unknown) for any monument, castle or ruin to be restored in England. Policy seems to dictate that decay is arrested or retarded and any ground is grassed, regardless of whether the appearance of the structure is known or whether the ground was originally paved. I remember as a child wondering how the grass could have grown inside a cathedral, and I remain unconvinced that the present policy is the correct one.
The sound of a horn being blown announces the arrivals of a Roman Legion. We nip off to have a look and will share this with you in the next entry.
Monday 27 May 1998. It was a public holiday. The other guests were hoping for a busy day at the craft fair and reported that there had been a lot for people to see and do the previous day. This was a double edged sword for stallholders of course, as the public could watch the attractions and spend less time (and money) on the craft stalls. We wished them well for the day to come and took our leave of Wychurch Farm. For the rest of the holiday we would look for somewhere to sleep during each day.
We had decided to go to Old Sarum, the old fortified town that stood above, and predated, Salisbury. Our route took us past our second white horse of the week, on the hillside at Westbury.
It's been on a bit of a diet, this horse... Recently I read reports that the white horses of southern Britain may not be as old as previously thought and that some of them may be as recent as the 18th or 19th Century. The one that everyone still thinks is old is perhaps the most mysterious - the one at Uffington in Oxfordshire. We're a long way from that, but we will get there towards the end of this holiday so that's something to look forward to.
Driving on from Westbury, we passed Stonehenge on our right hand side. Robbed of it's atmosphere by high wire fences, turnstiles and the distance at which visitors are kept, the monument never-the-less retains its majestic dignity and one is always humbled at the thought of the human effort to build such a structure with bare hands.
It prompted me to make a slight detour to see the site of a similarly laid out structure but using wood instead of stone: Woodhenge. The wood of course has long-since vanished.
Concrete markers have been erected to show the sites of the excavated post holes. The single prehistoric grave had been freshly covered with a bunch of wild flowers. This is not a well known monument like Stonehenge or Avebury. There is even a very similar site in Lancashire on the Bleasdale hills, a few minutes drive from where I live, though it is on private land and not accessible by the public. Whatever the mystery surrounding the site there is something non-mysterious and distinctly non-magical about concrete posts...
Sunday 26 May 1998. As we motored away from West Kennet Long Barrow we passed through the Wiltshire town of Devizes.
As we passed over a bridge, crossing the Kennet and Avon Canal I saw the familiar black and white beams and remembered that Devizes has a famous flight of locks.
I parked the car and we walked back over the road and onto the towpath. There are 29 locks in a little over 2 miles but here at Caen Hill the 16 locks are so close they resemble a flight of stairs.
The best place to photograph them is from the bottom of the flight of course, but I had parked at the top and time was pressing.
Besides, the Lock Cottage Tea Room is near the top and we were served scones with jam and clotted cream and took a table by the window with a view of the locks. Very pleasant! An elderly gentleman came in with his family and sat solemnly down at the next table before turning to me and then commencing to "play" the table as a piano. We shared conspiratorial grins as he confided "I like to joke!" whilst his family chided him to behave.
The Kennet and Avon Canal links the River Avon to the River Kennet by the way of 57 miles of man-made waterway that was completed in 1810. A mere 31 years later the arrival of the railway left the canal in decline and by 1952 it was largely unnavigable. Thanks to the efforts of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, together with British Waterways and Local Authorities, 86 derelict locks, the bed of the canal, aqueducts and pumping stations have been restored to make the canal navigable again between Reading and Bristol.
It's still Sunday 26 May 1998. After leaving Avebury, we parked the car at nearby Silbury Hill and walked up the long path opposite towards West Kennet Long Barrow.
This crop circle met us halfway up the hill. It had been formed in the early hours of 4 May 1998 in a crop of oil seed rape. It was a 250-280ft diameter ring with 33 scroll motifs fitted into the ring. As I took the photograph a chap said "So is it aliens or what?" With great effort I resisted the urge to laugh and say "You Earthlings are so funny!"
This is what we had really come to see. West Kennet Long Barrow. The barrow has five chambers that contained human remains. The huge stones were added much later to block off the entrance with it's small courtyard, when the tomb ceased to be used.
These places can have no small atmosphere of their own... The entrance is seen here, reached by walking around the side of the standing stones.
How light it is inside depends on whether the turf has grown over some small skylights that have been set into the ceiling of the tombs. The first set of skylights have been covered on the hillside above with a thoughtful slab of concrete, not entirely in keeping with its surroundings... We had been here once before in 1990 when the turf had blocked out all of the other skylights. Now, the light was almost enough so that you didn't have to walk holding a nervous hand outstretched before you! I had a separate flashgun with me and placed it in the side chamber to the left for this shot. It was fired with a gizmo that set it off when it "saw" the burst of light from the on-camera flash.
Finally, a view from the far end of the chamber, looking back towards the entrance. Miss Franny is playing at being a cave troll...
