©Bryan Phillips June 2026

I bought and read this book in 2005, that is before the Milton Abbas Local History Group was formed. I have now reread it with Milton Abbas in mind and the authors’ examination and excavation of two downland parishes Overton and Fyfield, both in Wiltshire, over forty years reveals the similarities of the landscapes of these parishes with Milton Abbas, since the end of the last ice age to today.

There are very few landscape studies on this scale, although Shapwick by Mick Aston springs to mind, and certainly nothing has been done in Milton Abbas, which is a shame but also an opportunity for the future.

So much can be learned about the uses to which the land has been put, and ancient settlements, from using the Ordnance Survey 25 inch maps (which MALHG has), aerial photography and field walking, field and parish boundaries, and woodland. All dependent of the local geology – in Milton Abbas Upper Chalk, clay with flints, and riverine deposits; in Overton and Fyfield Upper Chalk, clay with flints and sarsen stones deposited by glaciers.

The age and location of the various types of barrows also hints at ancient locations of burial and ritual. Below is Stable, or Staple barrow, a neolithic long barrow of 3000-5000 BC sitting on the parish boundary as described in a perambulation of 1381. All these were known, used and named in Anglo-Saxon times.