Geoffrey Grigson in A Gazetteer To Wessex, in the book About Britain No.2, Wessex, A New Guide Book With A Portrait By Geoffrey Grigson, published by Collins in 1951, noted:
Wilton, Wiltshire. Small town appended to Wilton House (the Earl of Pembroke), on the site of the ancient abbey. The House is partly Tudor, partly Palladian, by Inigo Jones and John Webb, partly neo-Gothic by Wyatt. Superb rooms, notable pictures by Lucas van Leyden, Van der Goes, Van Dyck, etc., and famous landscape garden. Wilton itself is a carpet-making town with a long history. The fascinatingly ostentatious church (1844) in the Italian Lombard style contains old glass, part of a 13th century altar from St. Maria Maggiore in Rome, and among the memorials a powerfully intimidating bust of one of the 18th century Earls of Pembroke. Three and a quarter miles west of Salisbury.