A DOWN FARM 3 



Salisbury Plain forms the heart of the English 

 chalk, and it was on the western edge of the Plain 

 that we saw our first farming. We climbed up to 

 the Battlebury Camp behind Warminster, and at our 

 feet was spread out the structure we were so often to 

 see repeated the steep scarped face of the down 

 descending to a terrace of Chalk Marl and a narrow 

 valley of Gault Clay ; beyond that a ridge, in this case 

 of Upper Greensand, clothed with the Longleat woods, 

 and beyond that again the great vale of Somerset. 

 As is so generally the case, a little stream, rising 

 beyond the chalk area, had cut a gap through the 

 escarpment and flowed in a deep valley through the 

 chalk, though the present contour of the land seemed 

 to offer an easier lateral outlet to the sea. From the 

 Battlebury Camp, now a sheet of waving barley, we 

 could make out the farms running in long strips from 

 the high down to the water meadows bordering the 

 little stream, thus giving each farm its small area of 

 rich pasture, some fields of comparatively heavy land, 

 then a larger portion of " four-field " land lying on the 

 lower slopes, and then a strip of " bake " below the 

 open grass land on the top. This grass land is 

 generally old sheep-walk strewn with the typical chalk 

 flowers, the ladies' bedstraw, the nodding thistle, and 

 the beautiful drop-wort most conspicuous, with rock 

 rose, thyme, and milk-wort below, but sometimes it is 

 newer turf which has only been resown with grass 

 since the great depression brought about a reduction 

 in the arable land even in this specially arable country. 

 Below the down comes the " bake," which is a Wilt- 

 shire term for the highest thin arable land and, 

 according to the local derivation, associated with the 

 practice of " baking and burning " the turf when the 

 down was originally taken into cultivation. Whatever 



