Part II
Chalk Country

FIGURE II.1 Chalk country: Melbury Beacon at the western end of the Ox-Drove ridge, Cranborne Chase, seen from the south.

FIGURE II.1 Chalk country: Melbury Beacon at the western end of the Ox-Drove ridge, Cranborne Chase, seen from the south.

I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year. . . . I think that there is something peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect of the chalk hills in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt and shapeless. . . something analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides and regular hollows and slopes. . . as they swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so much above the less animated clay of the wild below. (Gilbert White cited in H. J. Massingham 1936: 1)

H. J. Massingham still remains unsurpassed as the topographic writer of the English chalk downlands. It appears almost preposterous to want to exalt these hills, rarely rising above 250 metres, to the status of mountains, as he and Gilbert White wish to do. But, as he explains, there is something very special about the chalk downlands of southern England. The general outlines and configurations of the chalk downlands are more or less uniform. The effect is ‘to create an illusion of infinite distance by the repetition of like forms’ (ibid.: 7), giving an illusion of a landscape without limits. However, it is ‘the variation of detail within the general law of the downlands shapes that perennially refreshes the eye. Obedience to this law allows within its folds for a multiform diversity in the patterns of the hills as they pass’ (ibid.: 8). The boldness of the landscape is one of its principal characteristics in which the lines of the land and its contours are far more significant than its shades, colours, or local details. For Massingham, this boldness gives the downlands, like the sea, elemental and eternal qualities manifest in ‘the protruded spur, the fluted hollow, the giant but unstrained buttress, the flowing lateral ribbing, the sinuous curve, the blunted promontory, the unbroken passage of the ridge, the dipping and soaring of the range. . . it is this absence of harsh and abrupt conformation which gives to the chalk downs the appearance of perpetual movement’ (ibid.: 8).

The sharp breaks at the tops and bottoms of the scarp slopes create very well-defined ridges, forming a dramatic backdrop to the lowland landscapes, and from the top of the escarpments there are extensive panoramas across the plains below. The various hills and ridges along the escarpment, with their distinctive profiles, are obvious landmarks from the vales below. The analogy of a coastline with its headlands and bays, dissected by streams with its precipitous cliffs, seems peculiarly appropriate in some respects (Burden and Le Pard 1996: 64).

In chalk country, there is little or no surface water and, as a consequence, few rock exposures except in coastal or river cliffs (see colour plate 1). But everywhere where the ground is disturbed, or dug into, the striking whiteness of the rock is exposed. When freshly built, monuments in Chalk country— white against a background of green—would have been highly visible places in the landscape. For the most part, they have only a subdued presence today. Being a sedimentary rock, chalk does not naturally erode into blocks to provide a source of building material, and, being soft, it remains unsuitable anyway. In chalk country, one generally builds with wood and clay rather than stones. The only available and exposed stone that occurs in some areas is not the chalk but blocks of sarsen stone. This is extremely hard sandstone, grey and gnarled, with many irregular erosion hollows; it is made up almost entirely of silica. It contrasts utterly with the chalk. Sarsen blocks, some small in size, others huge boulders, generally litter the coombes but only in rather restricted and localised areas, principally the Marlborough Downs 20 km to the north of Stonehenge. None or very little occurs on the chalk downlands farther to the south and west. Chalk is far more famous for another rock-flint—occurring in veins or seams running through it—extracted and fashioned into implements and exchanged throughout prehistory. It is also a stone that sometimes occurs in forms that have a striking resemblance to human bones, as discussed in Chapter 2.

In some areas, the Chalk ridges are frequently intersected with deep and dramatic coombes or dry valleys. The characteristics of the ridges and the coombes are strikingly different, and both were of great significance for monument location (see discussions in Chapters 4 and 5). These aspects of the chalk landscape together with the escarpment edges give the landscape its special qualities and character.

It is the contrasting qualities of the landscape that are now discussed, in relation to the construction of monuments in three very different downlands landscapes: the landscape around Stonehenge, the northern edge of nearby Cranborne Chase, and the South Dorset Ridgeway (see Figure 1.1 for locations). Of these, the landscape around Stonehenge (Chapter 3) is by far the gentlest and most muted, lacking much of the topographic drama of the northern edge of Cranborne Chase (Chapter 4) or the South Dorset Ridgeway (Chapter 5).