Bird Henge Trail Wiltshire

The Ramblers' Trail is a figure of eight beginning and ending at the Prince Leopold Inn, Upton Lovell,Wiltshire BA12 0HL. Bird Henge, created by the Scraptors Sculpture Group is by a public path on the Trail which is 3.33 miles long. Below on the right are details of each of the thirteen stages with images present and past of historical remains from Saxon carvings to a D-Day Bridge.This project was enabled by a Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs AONB grant.

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Launch Ramble on Bird Henge Trail November 15th 2014

We launched the online Bird Henge Ramblers' Trail with a free guided ramble on November 15th 2014 guided by Scraptor Anthony Wilson. The rain clouds rolled away to leave a dry but murky day for the 30 or so ramblers who gathered at the Prince Leopold Inn in Upton Lovell.

Fuller details of the trail are on the right. We welcome corrections and additional details. In particular we would like to know more about the annual deliberate flooding of the water meadows.When did it end? And there are photos here of British and Australasian soldiers at Heytesbury Camp in World War 1.It would be great to know who they were and their life stories.

Friday, 24 October 2014

Bird Henge Trail Start of Ramblers' Trail Stage No 1 The Prince Leopold pub Upton Lovell Wiltshire

The Bird Henge Ramblers' Trail starts and finishes at the Prince Leopold Inn, Upton Lovell near Warminster in the Wylye Valley Wiltshire BA12 0JP. The Trail is approximately 3.33 miles 5.66 kilometers long. It is in a figure of eight with Knook at the middle of the eight. The terrain is all flat. There are gates to open and shut but no stiles. There are mud and cow pats. Stage 12 can become very difficult in wet weather and it may be best from Heytesbury Mill to retrace your steps along the north side of the river back to Knook and thence to Upton Lovell

The Prince Leopold Inn above is Victorian and named after the fourth and favourite son of the Queen, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. He died in 1853 aged 31 after a fall in Cannes.He had inherited haemophilia through his mother.His country retreat was nearby Boyton Manor, hence the name of the pub. The further stages can be found by scrolling through the column on the right.

Thursday, 23 October 2014

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 2 Stage Upton Lovell Church

380 yards.Turn right out of pub and continue across crossroads to church. The tower is 17th century. There is a 14th century effigy of a knight. The royal coat of arms of the lion and the unicorn dates from 1717. Turn back to the village and turn right to the bridge across the river.

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 3 Upton Lovell textile mill

290 yards . Return towards village and at crossroads turn left down lane towards the river.Approaching the bridge on the left in the vegetation is some discarded masonry. There is more masonry below the bridge on the north bank and you will see that these bits fitted originally into the base of the bridge. The bridge is standing on remains of Upon Lovell Mill. In the 19th century this was an industrial village In 1816 John Everett bought the mill and later demolished it and built a steam driven textile factory on the site In 1833 it employed an estimated 400 people in the area In 1846 Everett ceased trading and the factory was used for various purposes including beaver cloth for uniforms and leather cloth for cars A fire gutted it in 1898 - see below. The table below shows the number of employees in 1861 and their ages from nearby villages,.some very young.some very old.

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 4 Slaughter Bridge in Upton Lovell to Corton Chapel

780 yards. The footbridge is known as Slaughter Bridge for unknown reasons. The pipe running parallel to it is the main water supply to Corton across the valley. From the bridge you can see one of the brick lined tunnels that once took water to flood the water meadows in the spring to encourage early growth of grass for sheep. Cross the bridge and continue in a straight line through the field. At the first bushes 45 yards on the left is this hole,not a rabbit hole but the remains of the elaborate water meadows system. Once through the large metal gate continue along the track between high hedges.You come to a T junction about 780 yards from bridge. The Trail continues to the right but you can deviate to the left for 150 yards under the railway bridge to see Ebenezer Chapel in Corton. The image below shows troops in World War 1 prior to a service. The chapel dates from 1828 when Nonconformity was strong in the valley.It has long since been converted into a private house and extended. The last two images shows a trig point one of thousands set up for mapping purposes. Return under the railway bridge and continue straight across the T junction towards Knook.

Corton was the site of one of the First World War army camps served in the Wyle Valley served by the good railway connections to the South coast.

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 5 Corton Chapel to Knook

825 yards.Return the way you came from the old Chapel under the railway bridge. and continue straight ahead rather than returning to Upton Lovell. You will come to Alice Dredge's Bridge (above) where according to local folklore a serving maid of that name fell in and drowned many years ago. The amount of water shown here is exceptional. This photo was taken in January 2013 after months of incessant rain in the wettest winter for decades. The bridge is, of course,much more recent. You will notice that the path here is slightly raised. Before decades of erosion it would have been even higher, raised as a causeway to take pedestrians above the water meadows which were deliberately flooded in the early spring to encourage the early growth of the grass for the sheep.You can see surviving drainage pipes and dips where the old water channels were. Cross the river to Stage 6. You will hear and maybe see a train or two along the line on your left. This opened in 1856. Heytesbury station was closed in 1955 - Beeching was not responsible. It was possible until then to send live chicks by train - see last image.

Bird Henge Stage No 6 Knook Manor and Church

200 yards. From the bridge you will see Knook Manor dating from the 16th century. The image below shows the manor in 1774. The manor estate was bought by Lord Heytesbury in 1828 from the Duke of Somerset. A century the house was in ruins and the estate was largely broken up in a series of sales. The next image shows it in 1926.It was bought and restored by two sisters Esther and Marjorie MacGill Crichton Maitland to whom there is a memorial in the church next door.

The banks of the River Wylye were higher then in 1926 than today but the Manor House still sat serenely above the floods in January 2014 (see below)

This typanum on the south side of the church used to be considered to be Saxon but the experts now say it is later. There is some carving by the altar still considered to be Saxon.

At the crossroads just beyond the church turn left and you will come to a foot bridge across the River Wylye

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 7 Knook to the pedestrian bridge across the Wylye River

200 yards. Turn left at m for Knook crossroads along a track which becomes a path.. Beyond the field on the right is a sewage farm for Knook Army Camp.This,then called Heytesbury Camp, was one of those opened in World War 1 in the Wylye Valley when huge numbers of soldiers were encamped in the Wylye Valley with quick rail connections to Southampton. The present buildings are all later.The camp has heavy use by British and NATO troops exercises on Salisbury Plain. You may hear explosions and see helicopters and Hercules planes. You will come to a bridge across the Wylye River on the left. This is a well known trout stream, carefully managed to maintain the stock.

In the corrugated iron shed by the bridge there is still machinery (see below) for pumping water. A company called Dutch n Warminster provided much of the machinery for the local schemes which led to the false notion that the Dutch were involved - admittedly their specialty.

The sluice created a pool which was used for swimming until the 1950's . The photos below show a similar pool near Crockerton further up the Wylye with bathers before World War.

The remains of the sluice remained as a precarious plank across the river until the 1970's like this one further down stream in 2015 which in that year was replaced by a new sluice.

The water meadows were flooded deliberately in the early spring to make the grass grow for the sheep. The view across the water meadows would have looked something like this but this was natural flooding in January 2014 after months of heavy rain created ore or less a continuous lake in the meadows to Salisbury and beyond

Just beyond the bridge you will see the remains of a sluice that was used to control the water supply to the meadows. Nowadays it is usually dry. This image was taken as the one above in January 2014 From the bridge continue along the path above the river. Continue along the path above the river.

Bird Henge Trail No 8 Bridge to Bird Henge

440 yards Continue along path beside and above the river on north side.Along the path are remnants of iron fencing installed in 1789 when the land in Heytesbury and Knook was enclosed. The land had been common with a complicated patchwork of individual rights. The map below was drawn up in 1774 showing the enclosed and common land.- a patchwork of tiny strips. Enclosure and rationalization was hugely involved. In 1783 an Act of Parliament to enclose the land of Heytesbury refers to "the said open and common fields, downs common meadows lie intermixed and dispersed and inconveniently situated with respect to the houses and inclosed lands of the owners and proprietors thereof." The commissioners in charge took solemn oaths to be impartial Land had to be swapped in order that that those with rights ended up with something equivalent to what they had before. In the transition period the commissioners laid down what should be planted where and when so that on acquiring new land one would find the same crop as one had had previously.And
there had to be new paths such as this one.

The maps below show Heytesbury army camp in World War 1 which extended both sides of the A36 road with parts of it in what is now the property of Bunters, site of Bird Henge. The present camp
north of the A36 is now known as Knook Camp.

Bird Henge Trail Stage No 9 Bird Henge

Bird Henge was created by the Scraptors Sculpture Group in 2014 and is close to a public path and visible from it at all times. It is located at Bunters belonging to Anthony Wilson one of the members.. He and his fellow Scraptors Paul Boswell and Rachel Macleay specialize in themed sculpture trail making sculpture mainly with recycled materials. The Bird Henge and this accompanying Bird Henge Ramblers Trail received a grant from the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Bunters is on the edge of that area which stretches south and east.The property is named not after the fat schoolboy but is an old place name; there was a small field here as long ago as 1774 called Bunter's Field. Bird Henge contain Wiltshire birds and some imaginary mythical ones. A procession of high priests and humanoids with bird like heads processes through the Henge. Below a Great Bustard which has been re-introduced on Salisbury Plain since 2004 in the Great Bustard Project. This is the world's heaviest flying bird. It was hunted to extinction in the 1840's in this area, its last stronghold in England.

Below Scraptors Rachel and Paul at work on the Great Bustard

Below a Barn Owl.They have suffered from a lack nesting sites in rotten tree stumps and the like. A programme of installing artificial nests particularly on the huge Ministry of Defence estate has helped their recovery in the although some very long cold periods and a very wet winter has set that back. A TV satellite dish provided the head for this owl.

Above a Lapwing or Peewit. The latter name recalls its plaintive cry that used to be common in the county when there were big flocks on ploughed fields.In October 1971 a flock of 11,000 was recorded near Tilshead on Salisbury Plain..Nowadays it was a rare event when 390 were seen at Langford Lakes down the Valley. Changing farming methods have reduced their numbers. The head for the Lapwing has a kettle as a base and the body car wheel arches.

The Little Egret has spread recently into the Wylye Valley via France.The first record of one in Wiltshire was in 1992,They are now permanent residents.They can be spotted near Bird Hernge.The body of the sculpture was the petrol tank of a Yamaha RD350 motorbike and was made for the Scraptors' sculpture trail at Stourhead, the National Trust property in Wiltshire in 2011 where it stood in one of the lakes (see below).

The Raven is now quite widespread again in Wiltshire and southern England; its population was once confined to remote mountain areas in Wales and remote seaside cliffs..

A mythical bird above and Below a Red Kite. They are common in Savernake Forest in the north of the county and can sometimes be seen locally. Their forked tales are their give away distinctive feature.

Bird Henge is at Bunters, a place name going back to the eighteenth century. It was occupied by Heytesbury Camp in World War 1 which stretched both sides of the A36. The northern part remains as Knook Camp. The postcard below was customized with the names of camps all over the UK.