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THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 



A party of soldiers helping with threshing (?) at Downton (Photograph in WANHS Library) 



farms which could only make use of much smaller 

 groups. Later the group size was reduced to 40 and, 

 towards the end of the war, smaller groups of plough 

 teams were being sent out to farms with very few 

 guards. There are references to five prisoner of war 

 camps in the county, the principal ones being at 

 Devizes, Wootton Bassett and Chippenham. In June 

 191 8 it was reported that 200 prisoners were being 

 employed in Wiltshire.'" A plough team of 30 

 prisoners was being used in February 1918 by Mr. 

 Wilson of Ramsbury. 2 " An inquest was held in 

 August on the death of two German prisoners of 

 war on the farm of Mr. Greenhill of Great Cheverell. 

 Whey for the pigs was piped from the dairy to an 

 underground tank eight feet deep and from there it 

 was pumped to the piggeries. When this pump 

 failed, the men attempted to go down a ladder and 

 collect the whey in buckets but they were overcome 

 by the fumes. 3 ' 1 Apart from these references, there 

 is no evidence of any widespread use of prisoners 

 of war in Wiltshire. 



THE ARMY PRESENCE IN 

 WILTSHIRE 



The large army presence in Wiltshire had a 

 significant impact on agriculture in the county. The 

 army had long used parts of Salisbury Plain for 

 training and in 1897 started to purchase large tracts 

 of land. By 1900 they had acquired 42,000 acres in 

 the area roughly bounded by Market Lavington, 

 Orcheston, Amesbury, Ludgershall and Upavon. 

 Further land was added in the next few years, 

 including the extension of the West Down artillery 

 ranges westward. 31 During the war, a number of 

 farms were also taken over. At the beginning of the 

 war Wiltshire had 717,819 acres of land under 

 cultivation either arable or permanent pasture but 

 by 1 9 1 8 this had decreased to 690,78 1 acres. Some 

 of this can be explained by the re-classification of 

 some land from permanent pasture to mountain 

 or heath grazing but undoubtedly a substantial part 

 of the decrease must be attributable to the army 

 expansion. 



