Tag: Walbury Hill

Say, ‘Hello’ to Marilyn

I have a vague memory from school geography lessons of being told that, if you draw a line which passes through the Bristol Channel in the south west and the Wash in the north east, everything above the line will, more or less, be in “upland Britain”, whilst everything below will be “lowland Britain”.

Staring at my Philips’ School Atlas and the page showing “British Isles – Political” this distinction did not seem quite right. A line drawn from Bristol to the Wash would leave much of Lincolnshire, a county with a reputation for flatness, in the “upland” sector, whilst much of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds in the “lowland” half.

Perhaps I’d just got my line in the wrong place. However, it is indisputable that there are more uplands to the north and west. In Scotland, for example, mountains over 3000 feet or 914.4 meters are called Monros and there is a total of 282 of them. There is no way we in the south can compete with that. Climbers who complete all 282 earn the right to call themselves “Monroists” and join the Monro Society.

Down here in Wessex we might not be able to boast any mountains but that is not to say that our landscape is particularly flat. Not all of it, anyway.

A while ago, while researching something about hills in chalk downlands, I came across the term “Marilyns”. I thought this was a joke. So, if Scottish mountains are known as “Monros”, some wag decided to call certain hills, “Marilyns” after Marilyn Monroe” – get it?

But “Marilyns” are not a joke, although there is a certain humour in calling them that. The classification was first coined in 1992 by Alan Dawson in his book, “The Relative Hills of Britain” and refers to UK hills and mountains:

…with a prominence of 150m or more regardless of height.

Or to put it another way:

A Marilyn is a hill of any height with a drop of 150m or more on all sides.

Alan Dawson

And so our “local” hill, Walbury Hill is a Marilyn. Although it rises 974 feet above sea level, it is its prominence of 188m or 617 feet above the surrounding hills which is its qualifying factor. Neighbouring Marilyns are Butser Hill in Hampshire at 158m or 518 feet and Winn Hill in Wilshire at 159m or 522 feet.

There are 174 Marilyns in England and a total of 1556 throughout the UK where Walbury Hill comes in at number 107. Perhaps not much of a distinction for a hill that was once classified as a mountain by the Ordnance Survey in the nineteenth century. But we can still boast that our local Marilyn is the highest point in chalk in southern England!

Theresa Lock, November 2023

Sources including:

rhoc.uk/marilyns/

hill-bagging.co.uk/Marilyns.php

Once a mountain

Walbury Beacon Benefice is named after the point on Walbury Hill where, traditionally, a beacon has been built.

But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.

Thomas Hardy, “On Wessex Heights“

Walbury Beacon Benefice is named after the point on Walbury Hill where, traditionally, a beacon has been built. Originally beacons were lit across the south of England as an alert to the danger of invasion. More recently and at least since Victorian times, the chain of beacons has been lit to celebrate royal jubilees. Sometimes known as Inkpen Beacon, at 974 feet above sea level, Walbury Hill is the highest point on chalk in England and the site of Walbury Camp, an Iron Age hill fort, which, I believe, has never been excavated.

A beacon on Walbury Hill/Inkpen Beacon celebrating the Platinum Jubilee in June 2022

It will surprise some people to know that when the Ordnance Survey first surveyed this area, Walbury Hill was measured as being 1,011 feet above sea level, thus making it a mountain! However, a subsequent survey in the late C19th measured Walbury at less than 975 feet and so demoted it to the status of a hill.

Further westward along the ridge is Inkpen Long Barrow, one of only three long barrows in Berkshire but one of a cluster, most of which are located in Wiltshire and Dorset. However, it is not the long barrow that many visitors come to see, but the famous (or perhaps that should be infamous) Combe Gibbet.

Combe gibbet

Many people mistakenly believe that a gibbet was the site of a public execution, but this was not so. The original Combe Gibbet was only used once but it was not for an execution. In 1676, George Broomham and Dorothy Newman were convicted of the murder of George’s wife Martha and son, Robert. They were executed at Winchester but their bodies returned to their home parishes where they were hung on the gibbet – as a deterrent to anyone contemplating committing murder. What contributes to the general confusion between a gibbet and a gallows is the fact that the downland on the north side below the gibbet is marked on OS maps as “Gallows Down” – presumably a misnomer which has stuck!

As many of you will know, the story of Broomham and Newman inspired the then young Oxford graduate John Schlessinger, to make his first feature film, “The Black Legend”. In the late 1940s the Schlessinger family lived at Mount Pleasant, between Inkpen and Kintbury  and so the grisly local landmark would have been a familiar sight to them. With family members and friends from Oxford taking the major roles, John Schlessinger filmed the story of murder during the summer of 1948, using many local people as extras. I doubt any of these villagers had the remotest idea that this young man would one day go on to be one of Britain’s foremost directors winning 7 BAFTAs and an Oscar.

Nearly 20 years later John Schlessinger was to return to Wessex to film his adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd”. Filmed entirely on location in Wiltshire and Dorset, what fascinates me about this later work are the number of scenes which recall moments from Schlessinger’s earlier film. It is as if the inspiration he took from his work around Walbury Hill stayed with him and was used in this, one of the visually most beautiful of British films.

However, it is not only because of the Black Legend that many other people visit Walbury Hill. The Newbury Weekly News archive features various accounts of visits to the area or discussions of its history. Some time in the late C19th, the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy visited Walbury Beacon – though perhaps to confuse us even more, he calls it “Ingpen Beacon” – and referenced it in his poem, Wessex Heights:

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

Walbury Hill might not be a mountain but it remains a much loved landmark.

Theresa Lock