England 13: a peaceful afternoon in Wiltshire, featuring the Oak Barn & Alton Priors

Before the SERIOUS drama hits! Well, it hits on Tuesday so we have another nice peaceful day after this one. I left off the last entry as we arrived in Pewsey and were met at the station by an exhausted and thrilled-to-see-us Baker B. We headed on to our cottage, just outside Marlborough, which is about 7 miles from Pewsey.

Of course we had a little trouble finding the Oak Barn, and ended up having to call the owners and get directions, but we were on the right road and had driven by it a couple of times – you can’t see it from the road and the driveway is hard to spot. We’d never been able to find it on Google Earth, oddly enough. The people who rented it to us also rent another cottage called The Stone Barn and I’d gotten the impression that they were in two completely separate places, but turns out they were all in one little farmyard- The Oak Barn, The Stone Barn, and the Barrow Farmhouse, which is where the landlords live.

These are very out of order — it was much later in the week before I took pictures of the house, and I didn’t take pictures inside the Oak Barn till the morning we left, but we’ll pretend this is from our first day:

NOT where we were staying — this is the landlords’ gorgeous house. It dates from 1799 and is built out of sarsen stones from Fyfield Down, which has the largest collection of sarsen stones in England and is within walking distance of the house. (The huge stones at Avebury and Stonehenge are sarsen stones) This being Wiltshire, there are stones and barrows and ancient artifacts everywhere — the landlords had an archaeologist digging around on the hill behind their house during the previous summer, and he found a barrow (prehistoric burial ground) with the remains of a high priestess, so, yeah, REALLY cool spot. I took the farmhouse picture from the road in front — it’s right on the fairly busy Bath Road although it doesn’t look like it from this picture. It’s a great location; you could walk to Marlborough (2 miles) and walk up behind the house to a number of historical sites, like Kennet Long Barrow and Fyfield Downs.

Barrow Farm is a working farm, with chickens all over the place and horses out in the field, and lots of farm machinery. The two cottages are little renovated barns, and the cottages and the main house are in a small compound with a surprising amount of privacy- everyone has a fence and a gate.

A corner showing a bit of all three:

The Oak Barn is to the left, Stone Barn to the right and the Barrow Farmhouse kind of between them. It was a very nice set-up.

The Oak Barn!

It was impossible to really get a good picture, since the yard was very small and there’s a big privacy fence. You can’t get back far enough from it.

It was small but VERY nice– clean and shiny and just plain adorable. The living room:

I will say that the little tile area where the woodstove sits was a nightmare – it sticks up several inches from the floor, and I think we all tripped over it at least once. Being me, I tripped over it numerous times. We finally pulled the coffee table over right in front of it so we’d stop doing that. We had a fire one night (maybe two nights- I forget), despite it being June.

The kitchen:

The bedrooms were cozy and teeny and impossible to get a good picture of, so I’ll skip them. The whole place was really nice. There wasn’t quite enough storage for three people, especially in the bathroom, but that was just a small inconvenience. And the price was very reasonable. We found it on TripAdvisor’s UK site – Holiday Lettings. The landlords were wonderful, too. Totally staying there again next time.

We got there earlier than they expected us and their daughter was still cleaning as the people before us had just left that morning, so we hopped back into the car and went driving around. We of course went into Marlborough, but I’m going to save all those pictures for next time. We drove through Avebury (oddly can’t remember if we even got out of the car, but I don’t think we did- we went to Avebury nearly every other day, though). We did go to Alton Priors and saw the cool ancient church there, and then for our first of many visits to The Barge, home of UFO sightings and UFO nuts and really good beer.

All Saints Church in Alton Priors dates to the 12th century, and has trapdoors in the floor that once contained sarcen stones (one still does), a mysterious bronze plaque with a strange inscription, and a 1,700 year old yew tree in the yard. Yes, seventeen hundred years old!

It also has a great view of the Alton Barnes White Horse, and cows.

The 1,700 year old yew tree:

You can go right in – it’s unlocked. They do have services there, but only a few times a year now.

The trapdoor with a sarcen stone inside… how creepy is that?!?

Stones set into the floor that are apparently tombstones:

Interesting unreadable things on the walls:

The strange plaque:

The plaque was for a local landowner, William Button, and nobody knows what it means. Creeeepy!

WELL, after that we went on to the lovely Barge for beers and food and to soak in the atmosphere, but since this has gotten so long, I’ll make that the next entry. Nothing like stretching a two-week trip out for six months!