132 - Salisbury Plain and West Wiltshire Downs : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The Chalk of the National Character Area (NCA) is part of a wider sweep, extending from the Dorset coast up across to north of the Wash into Yorkshire.

The views from and to the escarpment over the Vale of Pewsey and the Avon Vales NCA form the principal connection to the areas to the north. Views from this NCA to the north are extensive and long distance.

The rivers of the Avon system rise locally, within the NCA itself or to the north in the Berkshire and Marlborough Downs, and flow south towards the New Forest. They may once have served as transport routes. To the south of Salisbury, after the rivers have joined, there are flood risks, which may affect settlements in the adjacent Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase NCA.

The area is a catchment for rivers affecting the Hampshire Downs to the east. A substantial pipeline network to move freshwater between the NCA and the Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase, to the south, was under development in the early part of the 21st century by Wessex Water. This is likely to prove vital for secure water supplies thereafter for this NCA, in addition to assisting with the water flow along the River Avon system, designated under European legislation as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

Transport links are by major roads running broadly east-west – thus to the South Hampshire Lowlands, the New Forest and Avon Vales, and onwards to London or Bristol. There are few rail links.

The Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site shows that the link north to Avebury, on the Marlborough Downs, is very longstanding and the likely result of related cultures. This now generates infrastructure and recreational links through the tourist and heritage industry, with many related connections between the numerous sites of interest.

The Salisbury Plain and West Wiltshire today

The overall character is of an extensive open chalk plateau, with a nearcontinuous dramatic scarp to the north, and a pattern of attractive valleys to the east and south. Two seperate areas, covering around one third of the NCA are designated as Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB): Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB to the south and North Wessex Downs AONB to the north-east.

The two areas of AONB are noteworthy. Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs to the south is designated as an AONB for its rich chalk down, whaleback ridges, wooded valleys and deeply rural, agricultural character and its rich archaeological resource. It is separated from its fellow AONB by Salisbury Plain and shares its sense of remoteness and generally dark skies.

The North Wessex Downs AONB lies to the north east, towards Marlborough, and is designated for its wide open downland and the scarp slopes, rich in flora and wildlife, its ancient woodlands, and its river valleys with rare spring-fed and fast-flowing chalk streams.

Salisbury Plain is the largest expanse of the rare habitat of unimproved chalk grassland in north-west Europe. It is designated as an SAC and is rich in chalk plants and invertebrates. It is also rich in bird species, notably the stone curlew, and is designated as a Special Protection Area (SPA), again under European legislation, as is the nearby area of Porton Down. The latter is generally known for its military and scientific role, but has distinctive and valuable heathland flora.

A major theme in this NCA is the continuity of use and division of the landscape, with features ranging from the Bronze Age through to the Roman and early Saxon periods all being used as boundaries for medieval estates and parishes, suggesting that many of the land units seen today reflect much earlier territorial divisions. Most of the area had been cleared of its woodland for farming and grazing by the end of the Neolithic period, resulting in the thin chalk-based soils which have helped to shape much of the area’s agricultural development and heritage. Large farmsteads are a feature across the area, often with nearby workers’ housing. Large arable fields with few hedgerows or settlements predominate across the area, resulting from the piecemeal enclosure of open fields around villages and also open downland from the medieval period. These changes worked within an earlier framework of droveways and routeways. Fields on the plateau generally date from the late 18th century, are more regular in their form and have been most affected in the post-1950 period by declining hedgerow management and their removal. The downs to the south and west are broad hills with long views, separated by shallow dry valleys. The main land use is arable farming, with much of the eastern area down to pasture – not least for the benefit of locally rich archaeology and for the setting of the prehistoric monuments, from the early Robin Hood’s Ball to Durrington Walls, the Cursus and Stonehenge itself. There is abundant evidence of settlements and surrounding fields across the open plateau and also across the area, which is thought to have been largely cleared of trees in the Neolithic period. The settlements moved down into the river valleys after Roman times.

There are scattered copses and shelterbelts – many planted in the 18th and 19th centuries – on the high downs, with earlier and more substantial areas of woodland confined mainly to valleys and steep slopes. There are some extensive ridge top ancient oak woodlands, some with newer planting, such as at Grovely Wood. Occasional new planting of small broadleaved woods around the chalk plain may take place where military training needs call for woods as cover, and where it is appropriate on a site-specific basis.

The plateau is drained by the River Avon and its tributaries, designated as an SAC for its biodiversity in fish (notably two lamprey species) and aquatic plants, such as the water crowfoot. These rivers drain along their natural course into the Avon just north of Salisbury, and expand across a flood plain just to the south of the city. The views over the flood plain to the historic core of the city and its cathedral were immortalised by the artist Constable and remain little changed, with functioning watermeadows between Salisbury and Harnham and beyond to Bodenham.

The low ridges of abandoned floated flood meadows which have developed from the 16th and 17th centuries are characteristic; although many meadows have been lost, some continue to be grazed, notably by cattle. The valleys and watercourses are often lined with areas of carr woodland with willow and alder. Locally abundant is an ancient plant, marsh marigold; also found is the rare brown galingale. The river valleys to the south and west are sheltered and include long- established settlements, revealed not least by the smaller field enclosures from up to the 16th century.

Clay and gravel deposits, and exposures of older Jurassic rocks, some notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, illustrate the action of water over time through the chalk landscape. Steep sided and with narrow flood plains, the valleys are visually contained and often appear remote.

Nucleated settlements prevail, often with groups of former estate cottages in uniform style. Older cottages are of cob and timber frame with thatch roofs, with brick and tile common from the early 19th century onwards. There is some use of local stone, for example the distinctive Chilmark stone or knapped flint with clunch. This adds to local distinctiveness.

There are few major communication routes across the NCA; where possible, people travelled along the valley floors but went across the Downs when necessary, heading north and south.

This is a rural area with over 70 per cent agricultural use. This is largely arable, with some livestock use (generally pigs or sheep), in particular around Stonehenge, where there has been a drive for reversion to pasture. The popularity of Wiltshire ham, and its suitability in rotation with arable farming, also encourages the continuation of pig farming. Land is also managed (at least in part) in the interests of game shooting, which brings benefit to the local economy and affects the management measures that are applied. The main modern influence on the Plain’s landscape is military activity, which in places bars civilian use, generally influences the agricultural patterns, and is widely apparent owing to buildings and other infrastructure.

This NCA includes Stonehenge, part of a World Heritage Site, whose ancient monuments “together with their settings and associated sites… form landscapes without parallel”� and are testimony to ‘a wealthy and highly organised prehistoric society able to impose its concepts on the environment”�. Stonehenge retains spiritual associations for some. Over one million visitors from all over the world come to Stonehenge each year. Tourism and agriculture remain the main economic drivers within the NCA and likely forces for change, as they have been for well over a century.

The landscape through time

The western area of the NCA, the Downs, dates from the Upper Jurassic, around 150 million years ago, when Britain was covered by shallow shelf seas, and sees some exposures of that period. Later in the Jurassic Period there was, over time, a substantial fall in sea level. This resulted in a variety of depositional environments – marine and estuarine – leading to limestone, siltstones and clays. These deposits are seen in the areas along and to the south of the River Wylye. The notable resulting local stone is Chilmark Limestone, the building stone used for Salisbury Cathedral.

Salisbury Plain, as the core and northern and western part of the NCA, was formed during the Cretaceous Period, after 145 million years ago, when sea levels had risen again and shallow marine conditions prevailed. The Lewes, Seaford and Newhaven Chalks of this period form the majority of the Plain itself, and are very pure limestone of some 98 per cent calcium carbonate. There are few natural exposures of these chalks.

The plateau slopes slightly up to the north and west, with the northern scarp slopes particularly striking. Subsequent erosion by rivers has left the area with a pattern of river valleys with later alluvial deposits, all the rivers rising in the NCA other than the Avon itself. There are also many winterbournes, such as the Till, which flow over the Chalk only after prolonged rainfall. To the east, beyond the River Bourne, lie much more recent Tertiary deposits (including a number of sarsen trains) and superficial drift geology of alluvium, clay, silt, sand and gravel.

The area was largely cleared for agriculture and grazing at the outset of the Neolithic period (around 4200-3700 BC) followed by the development of a distinctive regional culture up until around 2500 BC and then continuing into the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman occupation. The result is an astonishing diversity of evidence for farmsteads and other settlements with their associated field systems, the development of large estates marked by linear boundaries which often formed the framework for present parishes, and causewayed enclosures, cursus monuments and hill forts (such as Scratchbury in the Wylye Valley), and finally Neolithic long barrows, bronze-age barrows and other ritual and funerary monuments. Pre-eminent among these is Stonehenge with its associated monuments, its significance recognised since 1986, with that of Avebury to the north, by inscription by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. This includes the Cursus monument dating from around 3600 BC and the circles of sarsens and trilithons erected within the circular earthwork enclosure of around 3000 BC, linked by its Avenue to the Avon. Archaeological work around 2000 revealed new information about its development, its association with the 12-hectare henge at Durrington Walls and its linked settlement, and its role in the development of Neolithic and bronze-age Britain.

Roman settlement consists of small towns such as the roadside town that developed outside the iron-age hill fort at Old Sarum, a few villa sites and villages. Of particular importance are a number of examples of deserted Roman villages on higher downland which survive, in part, as earthworks. These settlements appear to have been deserted by the 4th or early 5th centuries. It is probable that most rural settlement in the Roman period (of which there are few visible traces above ground) followed the existing pattern, with linear villages lying in the valleys alongside chalk streams. Within these valley-based settlements there is evidence for both medieval planning in the form of regular property plots and the desertion and shrinkage of settlements in the 14th and 15th centuries. The present pattern of discrete villages separated by farmland is often the result of the loss of some villages or shrinkage of existing villages at that time.

Salisbury, dominated by its cathedral spire, is the main urban area in this NCA. Salisbury is a medieval new town created by the Bishop of Salisbury, moving it from the hill-top location at Old Sarum, slightly to the north. Downton, a little to the south, is also a planned new town laid out opposite an earlier Saxon estate centre. In the Saxon period Wilton was the most important town, being the administrative capital of the area and having a royal residence. A rich legacy of churches with 12th-13th century fabric (such as Fisherton Delamere) testifies to the prosperity of this area in this period, and the wealth gained from its arable land and wool. Clarendon is a largely overlooked Saxon royal palace, to the south-west of Salisbury, rebuilt by Henry III in the 12th century and enjoyed until the 17th century.

Travellers wrote about Stonehenge – while addressing the Dissolution of the Monasteries on behalf of Henry VIII, and the 17th century sees it documented by antiquarian John Aubrey. This inspired interest, which was encouraged in the late 18th century by the romantic vision of its ‘wilderness’ and saw a growing exploration of the area. The NCA’s several important country houses with their associated parklands, for example Wilton House, Boyton and Wilbury, developed after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In parallel, large farms were developing from the 15th and 16th centuries, often based on leased estates of major ecclesiastical landowners and through the engrossing of the holdings of smaller farmers. This resulted in the creation of some of the largest farms in the country and the rise of the ‘capitalist farmer’ who had considerable resources. Wilton and other estates had a major impact on the rebuilding of farmsteads and the reshaping of the farmed landscape from the late 18th century.

Wiltshire’s landscape has been intensively used for military training and infrastructure from the late 19th century. Salisbury Plain is the largest training area in the United Kingdom, at some 38,000 ha, and is now one of the best-preserved archaeological landscapes in western Europe. The military use of the Plain has helped to conserve chalk grassland habitats for a rich diversity of fauna and flora, as well as the visible archaeology of settlement and land use from the prehistoric period which has been destroyed elsewhere by intensive arable cultivation. The remains of practice trenches from both World Wars and other features developed by the Army across the Plain are also of significance. Around the Plain are military camps which have developed into small towns, including Tidworth, Larkhill and Bulford. Outstanding and probably unique in an international context are the pre-1914 military aviation sites and structures at Larkhill, Netheravon and Upavon. Old Sarum retains the most complete group of hangars and other buildings relating to a grass flying field of the First World War period.

Over the latter part of the 20th century, there was much intensification of agriculture – which remains the major industry in the NCA – but the early 21st century brought more reversion to pasture and less arable, particularly in the area of the World Heritage Site. This development results in large part from a care for the historic environment and a willingness to support this financially – which may not prove to be of long duration. A positive development has been the restoration of the landscape setting to Stonehenge following the closure of the A344.

The farmed landscape and semi-natural habitats were, in the early 21st century, developing in a manner consistent with the overall (rural) character for the NCA, with little urban development outside military areas. Housing and other development was well managed, not least with the growing interest in and use of green infrastructure to make landscape serve many purposes such as for recreation, drainage and biodiversity. The designation of the SAC for Salisbury Plain and the River Avon has helped to advance the conservation of the NCA’s landscape.