n
Stonehenge was not, and Silbury Hill, that mystery of the Marlborough
Downs, was yet to be. On the western side of this old road are the
villages of Patney and Chirton. At the latter is a very beautiful
Transitional church. Near Beechingstoke, close to the Ridgeway, is a
famous British village, the entrenchment containing about thirty
acres. The old road comes down from the northern highlands between
Milk Hill (964 feet) and Knap Hill, the two bluffs that rear their
great bulk across the vale. Here beneath the "White Horse," a modern
one cut at the beginning of the nineteenth century, are the old
churches of Alton Priors and Alton Berners, the latter partly Saxon.

The road north-east from Rushall runs through Manningford Bruce. The
church here is possibly Saxon; it has a semi-circular apse. On the
north wall of the chancel is a tablet to Mary Nicholas with arms
bearing the royal canton. This was her reward for helping Charles in
his flight after the battle of Worcester. Manningford Abbots once
belonged to the Abbot of Hyde. The rebuilt church is only of interest
in possessing a very fine pre-Reformation chalice. Two miles farther
is Pewsey, a pleasant town surrounded by the chalk hills. From those
to the eastward Cobbett, when he beheld the vale stretched out before
him, broke into one of those simple but graphic descriptive touches
that help to make the _Rural Rides_ immortal, "A most beautiful sight
it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, fields,
meadows, orchards and very fine timber trees. The shape of the thing
was this: on each side downs, very lofty and steep in some places, and
sloping miles back in other places, but on each side out of the valley
are downs. From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields,
generally of very great dimensions and in some places running a mile
or two back into little cross valleys formed by hills of downs. After
the corn-fields come meadows on each side, down to the brook or river.
The farmhouses, mansions, villages and hamlets are generally situated
in that part of the arable land that comes nearest to the meadows.
Great as my expectations had been, they were more than fulfilled. I
delight in this sort of country..... I sat upon my horse, and I looked
over Milton and Easton and Pewsey for half an hour, though I had not
breakfasted."

Pewsey Church has a Transitional nave and Early English chancel; the
oblong tower being Perpendicular. The carved rered