Wiltshire

Four thousand years ago men of the Bronze Age, tolling against what seem, to us, almost impossible odds, somehow brought huge blocks of stone over great distances and struggled to form them into either simple or elaborate circles on Salisbury Plain. Before the sun rises each midsummer day, four thousand years later, a gathering of white robed figures keep faith, so they believe, with a religion stretching back over the centuries into prehistory. Such is the allure and magnetism of Stonehenge, of Avebury, and of the many other megalithic monuments to be found in that county of mystery, Wiltshire. Many are the books that have been written, endless the calculations that have been made, and the theories that have been put forward, in an effort to shed light on the real reasons for these silent, brooding stones being placed here. When the sun's setting rays lengthen the shadows cast by the stones, it is not difficult to believe any of the many explanations that have been given. All that can be truly said is that whatever the reasons those Bronze Age ancestors of ours had for attempting, and carrying out, such an enormous task, they must have seemed of supreme importance to them. It seems unlikely that we shall ever know the real motivation of their builders, and so they remain for us to speculate over, and to marvel at.

Another monument, built by men whose motives we do understand, soars majestically, its spire reaching for the skies, at Salisbury. The cathedral, one of the most beautiful in England, seems a fitting compliment to those older stones. Perhaps there is something about Wiltshire that prompts its people to transport stones from place to place, for the cathedral at New Sarum, as it was properly known, was partly built of stone taken from the original Norman cathedral at Old Sarum after it was abandoned in the thirteenth century! Nothing now remains of the older site except the foundations, and a plaque commemorating the election to parliament of its most famous representative, William Pitt the Elder, the eighteenth century Prime Minister.