Salisbury Plain A Hidden Archaeological Gem

Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in central southern England covering 300 square miles (780 km²).   It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, with a little in Hampshire. The plain is famous for its rich archaeology, including Stonehenge, one of England’s best known landmarks and is a hidden archaeological gem.

Largely as a result of the establishment of the Army Training Estate Salisbury Plain (ATE SP), the plain is sparsely populated and is the largest remaining area of calcareous grassland in north-west Europe. Additionally the plain has arable land, and a few small areas of beech trees and coniferous woodland.

The geology and geomorphology of Salisbury Plain: Image Crown Copyright

The boundaries of Salisbury Plain have never been truly defined, and there is some difference of opinion as to its exact area.   The river valleys surrounding it, and other downs and plains beyond them loosely define its boundaries. To the north the scarp of the downs overlooks the Vale of Pewsey, and to the north west the Bristol Avon. The River Wylye runs along the south west, and the Bourne runs to the east.  The Avon runs through the eastern half of the plain and to the south the plain peters out as the river valleys close together before meeting at Salisbury. From here the Avon continues south to the English Channel at Christchurch. The Hampshire Downs and the Berkshire Downs are chalk downland to the east and north of Salisbury Plain, and the Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase are to the south west. In the west and north west the geology is mainly of the clays and limestones of the Blackmore Vale, Avon Vale and Vale of Wardour.

Amesbury is considered the largest settlement on the plain, though there are a number of small villages, such as Tilshead, Chitterne and Shrewton in the middle of the plain, as well as various hamlets and army camps. The A303 road runs along the southern area of the plain, and the A360 cuts across the centre.

Robin Hood's Ball Barrow is located just outside the northern boundary of Stonehenge World Heritage Site but is listed as an associated site by UNESCO: Image DIO

Salisbury Plain is famous for its history and archaeology. In the Neolithic period Stone Age man began to settle on the plain, most likely centred around the causewayed enclosure of Robin Hood’s Ball. Large long barrows like White Barrow and other earthworks were built across the plain. By 2500 BC areas around Durrington Walls and Stonehenge had become a focus for building, and the southern part of the plain continued to be settled into the Bronze Age.

Around 600 BC Iron Age Hill forts came to be constructed around the boundaries of the plain, including Scratchbury Camp and Battlesbury Camp to the south west, Bratton Camp to the north west, Casterley Camp to the north, Yarnbury and Vespasian’s Camp to the south, and Sidbury Hill to the east.

Roman roads are visible features, probably serving a settlement near Old Sarum. Villas are sparse, however, and Anglo-Saxon place names suggest that the plain was mostly a grain-producing imperial estate.

In the sixth century Anglo-Saxon incomers built planned settlements in the valleys surrounded by strip lynchets, with the downland left as sheep pasture. To the south is the city of Salisbury, whose 13th and 14th century cathedral is famous for having the tallest spire in the country, and the building was, for many centuries, the tallest building in Britain. The cathedral is evidence of the prosperity the wool and cloth trade brought to the area. In the mid-19th century the wool and cloth industry began to decline, leading to a decline in the population and change in land use from sheep farming to agriculture and military use. Wiltshire became one of the poorest counties in England during this period of decline.

Salisbury Cathedral: Image-COE

There are a number of chalk carvings on the plain, of which the most famous is the Westbury White Horse. The Kennet and Avon Canal was constructed to the north of the plain, through the Vale of Pewsey.

Since the mid-19th century, much of Salisbury Plain has been used for military training. and large areas of the Plain have consequently escaped the intensive post-war arable farming regime which has characterised the majority of the southern English chalk lands. The military training areas therefore retain a wealth of well-preserved archaeological monuments and extensive relict historic landscapes. The primary function of these areas remains military training, a requirement which can, on occasion, conflict with the best management of the archaeological resource. The recent large-scale withdrawal of troops from Germany has resulted in a dramatic increase in the level of military training taking place on the Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) and has put considerable pressure on many of its monuments. Potential hazards include direct threats such as damage by tracked vehicles, digging of slit trenches and gun emplacements, and the planting of trees to provide training features, but also problems caused by severe scrub growth, burrowing animals, and inappropriate grazing regimes.

Although the MOD attempted to provide some protection for monuments from shortly after the Second World War, early efforts were crude and occasionally misguided. In some cases, upright railway sleepers designed to safeguard vulnerable monuments from vehicles were driven into the monument itself. Despite continuing improvements in recent years, such as the replacement of the old star-shaped scheduled monument markers by ‘no digging’ signs, it has become clear that further effort was required to safeguard archaeological sites. In recognition of the importance of the Salisbury Plain monuments and the particular management demands caused by military training, EH agreed that a Field Monument Warden should be dedicated to work in the SPTA, to advise the  The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), on the conservation and management of archaeological remains, as well as reporting on the condition of monuments.

The Defence Infrasructure Organisation (DIO) began to implement proposals for the improved protection of sites and approved by a panel which includes the DEO’s Nature Conservation Officer, the County Archaeologist, and a military representative. The first priority has been the physical protection of over 60 scheduled monuments by improving signing around them and, where necessary, diverting tracks which impinged upon them. The work is carried out by the DIO’s own team of foresters under the supervision of the Field Monument Warden.

A first attempt to protect an extensive barrow cemetery involved enclosing groups of barrows within an ‘envelope’ of signs. Whilst this has been successful in preventing further damage, it has been detrimental to the visual amenity of the monument and this approach has subsequently been refined by using a cordon of tanalised timber fencing posts as a barrier with less frequent provision of signs.

An example of the signs used on the plain: Image DIO

This system has proved to be extremely effective, still deterring vehicles but with less visual intrusion in the landscape. As no fencing wire is used, the monuments can continue to be grazed: an important factor as the monuments are also valued from an ecological perspective for the range of good grassland habitats provided on their slopes. Signing of the monuments was accompanied by a programme of rabbit control and by tree and scrub clearance which has done much to restore their visual integrity. A great amount of work remains to be done within the Training Area, initiating new projects and maintaining existing work, but this year’s achievements represent an important first step in securing best management for these important sites.

The presence of the military , destructive though it has been in specific areas, has helped to protect the Plain from plough damage as explained above. As a result it is now probably the best preserved area of upland in southern Britain, with earthwork remains of field systems, settlements and funerary monuments of various periods. On the Plain it is possible to walk along Romano-British streets in one settlement, through its fields and on, into the next settlement.

To help further investigation of the plain EH carried out a  National Mapping Programme on the training area.   The aim of English Heritage’s National Mapping Programme (NMP) is to enhance the understanding of past human settlement, by providing primary information and synthesis for all archaeological sites and landscapes visible on aerial photographs or other airborne remote sensed data.  The NMP project aimed to record not only the well known isolated features, but the landscapes in between.

Aerial photograph of the Central Impact Area of the Plain photographed 22-JUN-1994: Image-NMR 15042/02. © Crown copyright. NMR

The picture above shows one of the Roman field systems and settlements that survives on the plain.  In the right foreground of the above photo  is the major Romano-British settlement on Charlton Down that has spread out across the ‘Celtic’ field system, with its streets leading transversely across the hillside and into the valley. In the distance (top left) is the settlement on Upavon Down. Here it is possible to walk through Romano-British streets in one settlement, through its fields and on, into the next settlement. The small white spots are tank hulks, painted and used as artillery targets

The Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) Mapping Project was an internal project forming part of English Heritage’s National Mapping Programme (NMP). It grew out of earlier work by the Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England, who had been active on the Plain since the creation of Archaeological Site Groups (ASGs) under the auspices of the Salisbury Plain Working Party in 1986.

Previously work had been very largely field based and covered small areas at a large scale. For the NMP project all archaeological features surviving as either upstanding earthworks or visible only as cropmarks were recorded. The 1:10,000 transcriptions are available from the National Monuments Record Centre archive. Data relating to the transcriptions is currently available in the form of MORPH2 records, but the data will be available through AMIE the NMR database in the future.

Further detailed descriptions of the methodology and more in depth interpretations can be found in an internal report available from the NMR, ‘Salisbury Plain Training Area: A report for the National Mapping Programme’ (Crutchley 2000) and the findings of this project have also been incorporated in the publication ‘The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area’ (McOmish, Field and Brown 2001).

Portions of this article were cited from WikiPedia under the Creative Commons License.