Tuesday 28th July 2015
On Youtube:Â
Enhancements to urban training at Copehill Down village, Salisbury Plain.
New facilities have been added to the existing urban operations training facility at Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain. The new additions include alleyways, compounds, high level walkways and a new ‘shoot house’ which enables troops to practice indoor urban soldiering skills such as house clearance.
[Filming by Landmarc Support Solutions].
Sunday 7th December 2014
Environment Agency plans to invest more money into preventing flooding in Salisbury, Tisbury and Tilshead.Â
Read the Salisbury Journal report:
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/11650657.Salisbury_set_for_flood_defence_investment/?ref=mr
Thursday 31st July 2014
There’s a petition by White Horse Alliance on change.org asking Dr. Andrew Murrison MP for South West Wiltshire to support a proposal to make the western escarpment of Salisbury Plain, and the landscape of the Westbury White Horse and Wellhead Valley, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Westbury’s Town Council, its Area Board and several parish councils have asked for this spectacular stretch of countryside to be given the national protection against development that was first proposed by the National Parks Commission more than 60 years ago.
To read more about the petition and to sign it if you wish, click here.
Thursday 24th January 2013
Tomorrow evening (Friday 25th January 2013), at 8.00 p.m., on ITV, in the fourth episode in the current series of Wild Britain, survival expert Ray Mears explores Salisbury Plain.
This part of Wiltshire, rich in archaeology and home to the great stone circle of Stonehenge, is not only the largest area of chalk grassland but is also the habitat for a huge variety of wildlife.Â
Ray watches roe deer, badgers and brown hares, and gets close up with an invertebrate that depends on the ruts and puddles made by military vehicles on manoeuvres for its very survival.
Ray also gets ornith0logical, with the grey partridges, the corn buntings and the yellowhammers that thrive on Salisbury Plain, and takes a look at the bustard, the world’s heaviest flying bird, which has been reintroduced (it became extinct in England 180 years ago).
Tuesday 20th March 2012
The military road between New Zealand Farm Camp and Joan a Gore Cross, in the Salisbury Plain Training Area, will be closed to vehicles for road works during the week commencing 26 March 2012. This route is also a public bridleway (West Lavington 42) and walkers, cyclists and riders will be unaffected.
The Salisbury Official Guide, published during the 1960s, includes an advertisement for the Pheasant Inn with the following historical details:
The Pheasant Inn at Salisbury dates from the 14th Century, but does not appear to have always been an inn.
In 1638, it was the house of Phillip Crewe, a schoolmaster who, in his will, left it to the “Guild of Shoemakers” and Cordwainers.
After his death a wide stair case and a large hall were added, the latter to provide a meeting place for the guild. In 1772 the building and hall were bought by one Daniel Payson, Brewer and Malter. It was called “Crispin Inn” but the Shoemakers Guild met in the hall.
By 1828 it had become the “Rainbow Inn.” The Shoemakers Guild met there and do to this day. For a short period (1780-1790) the Clockmakers were allowed to meet in the hall.
From The Modern Encyclopedia, published in the early 1930s:
Salisbury Plain. District of Wiltshire. Composed of rolling chalky downs, to the north of Salisbury, it is about 20 miles long by 15. On the plain is Stonehenge, as well as Amesbury and other villages. Part is used for military purposes and the air force has a centre at Upavon.
1922
Advertisement:
Richardson Brothers.
Founded 1672.
Importers of foreign wines, spirits & liqueurs.
Office: City Chambers, Salisbury.
Cellars: Bridge Street.
Telegrams: Richardson Bros., Salisbury.
Telephone 97.
The Year’s Work In Archaeology 1921 published by the Congress of Archaeological Societies (in union -with the Society of Antiquaries of London) and printed by the Hampshire Advertiser Company Limited, 45 Above Bar, Southampton, 1922, included:
Mr. O. G. S. Crawford reports that he has followed ” Old Ditch,” on Salisbury Plain, between Knook Castle and its present most westerly known point on Warminster Down. He was able to add a little to the eastern portion, but could not prolong it westwards. Sir R. Colt Hoare’s statement that the work is older than the “British village,” near Knook Castle, immediately west of Quebec Farm, seems very probable, as it runs through the middle of the village; but it is not possible to check this, as the western portion has been ploughed flat since his time. The ditch is nearly always on the N. side; but in one place, where the work is very perfect half a mile N.E. of Quebec Farm, it consists of two banks fourteen paces apart, the southern being the higher, with a silted-up ditch between. It is referred to at this point as die in an A.S. charter of A.D. 989. Colt Hoare marks a portion of the dyke on Upton Cow Down, which Mr. Crawford did not find. This would carry the dyke right to the escarpment above Westbury Leigh. Mr, Crawford adds that a very fine ” hollow way ” leads from the “British village ” N.W. of Quebec Farm, down to an old embanked pond in a copse at the bottom of the valley southwards. The pond is probably as old as the village.
1880s – 1890s
Our Own Country, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial, is a six-volume set of books published by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., during the 1880s and 1890s. The writers of the illustrated articles in these books are not credited.
One of the volumes begins with an article about Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge. The first sentence of this article reads: “It is not unfitting that a book in which it is proposed to describe the most interesting and important sites of Great Britain should, in its opening pages, deal with Salisbury Plain.”
Here is an extract from the article, referring to the landscape of Salisbury Plain:
A century ago there was little touch of cultivation about Salisbury Plain. Sheep in the summer, and flock of bustards in the winter, were, in Drayton’s words, the “burgesses of the heath;” and a journey across it, even in fine weather, was not undertaken without some risk of losing the way.*
This condition of things has entirely changed. Good and broadly-marked roads traverse the plain in all directions, whilst corn-fields and tilled land have greatly encroached on it, stealing upwards from the surrounding valleys. But the general outline of Salisbury Plain is still sufficiently marked. It is the southern division of the two great divisions of the chalk in Wiltshire.
The northern division forms what is known as the Marlborough Downs, and its escarpments are far bolder than those of Salisbury Plain, from which it is divided by the Vale of Pewsey, which extends across the centre of the county, and is scooped out of the upper-greensand.
The southern chalk district extends from Salisbury in a line bearing north-east, by Amesbury and Sidbury to Easton Hill, where there is a wide view of the Pewsey valley, with the opposite heights of Marlborough, scarred by the Wansdyke. Thence the chalk ranges westward, with a little inclination to the south, as far as Westbury and Warminster; and so returns, in a line bearing south-east, by Heytesbury to Salisbury. All along this border the bolder heights are marked by intrenchments – Battlesbury, Scratchbury, Chisenbury – which overlook the richer country, and served as watch-towers for the ancient people of the plain.
In shape, this plain is an irregular triangle, whilst the length of each side may be roughly estimated at about twenty miles. Of its general character we shall better judge in passing over it toward Stonehenge. The chalk mass of the plain is pierced by the Bourne brook, by the Wily [Wylye], the Nadder, and the southern Avon, all of which meet in the neighbourhood of Salisbury. These river-valleys, in their quiet beauty, their hamlets nestled among trees, their venerable mansions, their broad meadows, through which the stream flows onward between tufts of purple loose-strife and great masses of sword-flag, contrast pleasantly with the open heights of the downs.
It is held, however, that the influence of the chalk is felt throughout Southern Wiltshire, and that the sharp division of the county is between the chalk district generally and that north of the Marlborough Downs, where the land for the most part lies on Oxford clay. Wiltshire is thus divided between “chalk” and “cheese” – for the northern district is a great dairy ground.
*Thus Mr. Pepys and his party, journeying from Salisbury toward Somersetshire, lost their way on the plain, and were obliged to spend the night in a strange town [Chitterne].
