Search results for ""Author Elizabeth Crittall""

The volume relates the histories of the borough of Devizes and of the 22 parishes in Swanborough hundred. It covers an area in the centre of Wiltshire, including the western end of the Vale of Pewsey, and ascending the escarpmentof the Marl-borough Downs to the north and that of Salisbury Plain to the south. Eastwards Swanborough extends to the Cheverells and the heavy clay-lands of west Wiltshire. Within it stand Milk Hill and Tan Hill, the two highest points in the county, and along the ridge of the Marlborough Downs is a series of important prehistoric settlement sites. Through the hundred run the ancient track known as the Ridge Way, a small stretch of Wansdyke, the Kennet andAvon Canal, and one of the main railway lines to the west of England. Once noted for its sheep-and-corn husbandry, the region has more recently seen a great ex-pansion of dairy-farming, particularly in the parishes of the Vale. Horticulture has also flourished on the greensand soils in the east and west. In 1975 the area remains almost entirely rural, although it in-cludes R.A.F. Upavon and the land on Salisbury Plain is within the army's con-trol. Most of the settlements are small, none now ranking as more than a large village, although Upavon had a market in the Middle Ages and Market Lavington had one until the 19th century. Almost all of the few industries have agricultural orhorticultural connexions. Great Cheverell was once renowned for its sheep-bell makers. Jam is still made at Easterton. Devizes has a history of unusual interest for a town of its size. Its castle, scene of many stirring events inearly times, was described in the 12th century as one of the most splendid in Europe. Its market, still held weekly in the 20th century, can be traced back at least to the early 13th. The central position of Devizes within Wiltshire gave it a claim to become the county town and has caused it to develop some of the characteristics of such a town.

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Volume I(2) contains a series of chapters originally planned to accompany within a single volume a comprehensive gazetteer of Wiltshire's prehistoric remains. In the event the gazetteer was published as Volume I(1) in 1957 and thechapters are now ap-pearing after a considerable lapse of time. Although the chapters are based largely upon the evidence contained in the gazet-teer, the authors have taken account of relevant excavations and research under- taken since 1957. The first five chapters tell the story from the beginning of human settlement until the end of the final phase of bronze technology, and they take, so far as archaeological evidence permits, a narra-tive form: thussome monuments with long life-spans, such as Stonehenge and Avebury, appear and re-appear as the chronological account unfolds. Those chapters cover a period for which the Wiltshire evidence is of great significance; they are written by Professor Stuart Piggott, whose long and close acquaintance with the antiquities of Wiltshire has enabled him to enter into considerable detail and often to set the local evidence against a continental or wider British background. Six chapters follow taking the story from the early pre-Roman Iron Age down to the end of the Roman era. Here the nature of the evidence makes a narrative style easier to adopt. The growing complexity of the settlement form is traced from the single enclosed farmstead of the early Iron Age to the hamlets and even small villages of the Roman period. The steady course of Romanization in Wiltshire is traced until its eventual collapse and the Britishvictory at Mount Badon. A final chapter deals with the Pagan Saxon period, using archaeological, documentary, and place- name evidence; it gives special attention to that impressive but enigmatic earthwork known on its Wiltshire course as the East Wansdyke. Numerous line illustrations have been drawn specially for the volume.

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Wilton borough, Old Salisbury borough, New Salisbury city, Underditch hundred. Indexed.

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Volume IX contains histories of Swindon, Wootton Bassett, and nine rural parishes. Special attention has been given to the development of New Swindon after the coming of the G.W.R. works in 1845, and to the effects of that development upon the small and ancient market town of Old Swindon. Space is also devoted to Swindon's quarrying industry; which flourished for 200 years before the arrival of the G.W.R. works, and to the new industries which were attracted to the town at about the time the railway works began to decline in the 20th century. The rural parishes lie chiefly to the south and west of Swindon, and several have been influenced in recent years by the growth of their large industrial neighbour. Some are also shortly to be disrupted by the construction of the M4 motorway through their land. Much of that land lies in the rich dairy-farming region of the county, but in the south it climbs the chalk escarpment of the Marlborough Downs, where sheep were grazed in the Middle Ages. A study of Wootton Bassett has led to the suggestion that it was deliberately laid out as a small market town in the 13th century. The impact made upon Lyneham by the R.A.F. station there is considered in the history of that parish. Among the illustrations is one showing what the large and elegant house at Lydiard Tregoze looked like before rebuilding in the classical style inthe 18th century. The volume contains a street plan and ten maps.

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Anglo-Saxon Wiltshire, Anglo-Saxon Art, Domesday. Indexed.

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Bradford, Melksham, and Potterne and Cannings hundreds (including Bradford-on-Avon, Melksham, and Trowbridge). Indexed.

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Ecclesiastical History, Industries, Roads, Canals, Railways, Population Table, Sport, Spas and Mineral Springs, Freemasonry, Forests. Indexed.

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