Tuesday 30th August 2005
Brian Redhead, in Months In The Country, first published by the Ebury Press in 1992, wrote:
“Oliver Rackham, who knows about ponds, reckons that the oldest man-made pond in England is probably the one called Point Pond which is in Great Ridge Wood near Salisbury. He says that pond was first dug before the Bronze Age, by a Stone Age man.â€
Ken Watts, in Droving In Wiltshire, innThe Trade And Its Routes, published in 1990, referring to the old drove road which runs through the Great Ridge Woods, connecting Corton (Field Barn) with the Hindon Fair site on Cold Berwick Hill, stated:
“Near the Roman road on the Great Ridge the drove forks, to pass either side of Point Pond (929 361), now merely a muddy depression, but once perhaps a waiting place one mile from Hindon Fair, particularly as ‘Penning Wood’ is shown (at 923 358) on the old 2 and a half inch Ordnance Survey.â€
Danny Howell writes:
“When I visited Point Pond in the summer of 2005, it was rather shallow, the water probably no more than two or three inches deep. The pond appeared to be nothing more than two small depressions in the ground, side by side. The area to the south of the pond had recently been cleared of all its trees (conifers), which had obviously changed the location from shady to being openly sunlit. I must admit seeing the pond with only shallow water and looking rather non-descript, not to mention the shorn state of the surrounding area, was something of an anti-climax for me. Having read of the pond’s importance in the droving days and having assumed the pond would be big and deepish, in a glade of deciduous trees, I felt rather let down. If only I could have seen it in its true glory, complete with a flock of sheep or herd of cattle watering from it, with the drovers looking on?”
Danny Howell adds:
“Richard Witt (born 1944), of Sundial Farm, Corton, remembers the pond supporting bullrushes, and Richard’s twin brother Robin says it was once a place for newts.”