Our private tours in London can take you to all sorts of fantastic places, but most people in Britain will be swift to point out that there are loads of great things to see outside the capital city as well.
This is absolutely true, which is why we run tours that take you beyond the capital to see some of the great things to be found across the south of England. Among the best places to visit is the south west, with Wiltshire being a county with some wonderful treasures to enjoy.
If you are coming to see Britain’s most historic and even prehistoric heritage, this particular trip is for you. It includes stone circles, giant horse figures carved out of the chalk hills and the splendour of Salisbury Cathedral.
Wiltshire’s Great Stone Circles
The most famous of all the prehistoric sites is Stonehenge, which is not just a stone circle, but a structure that may have acted as a temple, a gathering place, or even an ancient calendar.
Located on Salisbury plain, the flat landscape around it provides a clear view of the rising sun at both the winter and summer solstices, which may have acted as a means of tracking the changing of the seasons and the planning of planting and harvests, religious festivals, or combinations of these.
Stonehenge is around 4,000 years old and while there is much that is still not known, what archaeologists have discovered is remarkable, including just how many travel and trade links this area must have had.
For instance, most of the stones came from the Preseli Mountains in Wales, possibly being brought by migrating people moving to the area. Even more remarkably, a study last year indicated that the Altar Stone, which sits in the middle of the stone circle, actually came all the way from the far north of Scotland, over 750 km away.
A UNESCO World Heritage site, Stonehenge is open to the public and you can marvel at these stones and wonder what life was like all those years ago.
If that wasn’t enough, Stonehenge is not the only ancient stone circle in Wiltshire. Of the others, the most notable by far is Avebury, which is structurally far simpler but huge in scale, originally having over 100 stones. Two smaller stone circles lie within, with the whole structure being surrounded by a bank and ditch. This is also a World Heritage site.
Further prehistoric sites include various long barrows, a kind of ancient burial site, many of which are scattered across the county.
The Famous White Horses
While Wiltshire has some of the greatest prehistoric treasures in Britain if not the world, there are plenty of other great things we can confidently put a date on. These include the various white horses, vast figures carved from the chalk hills.
There are eight of these, with the oldest being the one at Westbury, carved out in 1778. Cherwell is just two years younger. At the other end of the scale, the Devizes white horse was carved out in 1999 to mark the millennium. So, while these horses are nothing as old as the stone circles, we can at least say none were created in the current millennium.
Not only are these horses spectacular in their own right, but the Downs they stand on are beautiful hills and offer fine views.
England’s Tallest Cathedral Spire
Wiltshire’s attractions are not just confined to the countryside. Salisbury Cathedral is a magnificent 900-year-old building, with a spire reaching 123 metres above the city, the tallest in England.
However, it was not always this way. The original cathedral, built by the Normans in the 11th century, was located two miles away at Old Sarum, the site of an Iron Age hill fort. However, the location was far from ideal and in 1217 it was decided to move the cathedral to its current site.
The present building dates from this time, with various parts being completed in the 13th century. A tour of the cathedral can include climbing the 332 steps up the tower and enjoying spectacular views across the city and beyond from the high vantage points, as well as inside the cathedral from the high wooden scaffolds.
Salisbury Cathedral is not even the oldest ecclesiastical building in the county, with the beautiful Georgian town of Bradford-on-Avon having one of the most complete surviving Anglo-Saxon buildings in the UK in the form of St Laurence’s Church, which dates back to around the seventh or eighth century.
All these treasures show why if you want to see the best of England’s history and heritage, dating back thousands of years, there is nowhere better to go than Wiltshire.
