voidably much
restored after having been struck by lightning early in the nineteenth
century; the Norman piers remain. All these villages gain in interest
and charm to the pedestrian by being just off the high road that keeps
to the west bank of the river. Upavon, however, is on a loop of this
highway and sees more traffic. Here is a church with a Transitional
chancel; it is said that the contemporary nave was of wood. The fine
tower and present nave belong to the thirteenth century. The Norman
font with its archaic carving and the fifteenth-century crucifix over
the west door should be noticed. Upavon was the home of a kindred
spirit to Cobbett, for here was born the once famous "Orator Hunt,"
farmer and demagogue--rare combination! He was chairman of the meeting
in Manchester that had "Peterloo" as its sequel. Near Upavon, but down
stream, is the small and ancient manor house of Chisenbury, until
lately the property of the Groves, one of whose ancestors suffered
death for his participation in the rising of Colonel Penruddock during
the Commonwealth.

At Rushall the narrow valley of the Avon, guarded by the opposing
camps of Casterley and Chisenbury, is left for the transverse vale of
Pewsey, on the farther side of which are the Marlborough Downs. A
number of chalk streams drain the vale and go to make up the
head-waters of the Avon; in fact two streams, both bearing the old
British name for river, meet hereabouts; the one rising about two
miles from Savernake station and the other about the same distance
from Devizes. Along the northern slope of this vale the canal made to
join the Kennet and Thames with yet another, the Bristol Avon, runs
its lonely course. Five miles west of Rushall is the divide between
the waters of the English Channel and the Severn Sea, and the Bristol
Avon receives the stream that rises but a mile from its namesake of
Christchurch Bay. High in one of the combes at this end of the valley
is the small village of All Cannings, said to have been of much
importance in the dark ages as a Saxon centre. All it has to show the
visitor now is a cruciform church with Norman and Early English
fragments and a good Perpendicular tower.

The villages of Pewsey Vale are many and charming. All are well served
by the "short-cut" line of the Great Western, over which the Devon and
Cornwall expresses now run. Across the vale, in an opposite direction
to the iron way, runs the Ridgeway, a road probably in use whe