My trip to the UK allowed for an opportunity for my wife and I to go and visit the places I grew up. Some of these houses, schools, towns are places I've not been back to for many years and all of them were new to my wife. I'll write some separate posts on the general sight seeing as this post focuses upon my years living in the UK.
Cherhill, Wiltshire
I lived in the quiet village of
Cherhill from the age of around 5 through to 12. My parents moved 3 times within the village and our visit back down memory lane has shown that much of the village remains the same. The school I went to seems very much the same, there are a few new houses and the most noticeable difference was the gas station is no longer there and has been replaced with 10 or more houses.
This is the first house I remember, albeit the only recollection I have were the light shades in the living room and the stairs (open style, wooden, going down into the living room). I would have been around 4-5 years old when we lived here. The house is semi-detached and my dad bought it while it was still being built and was able to influence the design. Due to being semi-detached the design had to match both houses and luckily the other purchaser was happy with the modifications as well. It looks like the house has had an extension built over the garage.
This is the second house and the one I have the most/fondest memories of. My dad bought the land and had it designed. The main items I remember were the very large kitchen/diner with a full length breakfast bar (good when you have 5 children), the polished wooden floor in the hallway which our dog (Heinz) used to slide across when you shouted out 'food' and also the large, albeit odd shaped, garden where we grew grapes for wine and lots of fruit and vegetables. The house seems similar to when we were there although the garden has been subdivided and another house built. I remember the many months that my dad (with us helping!) worked on mixing concrete to create patio stones. I didn't walk up the driveway to see if the patio stones are still there, I would expect they'd have been replaced by now considering this was 30 years ago! I also remember this house from my dad buying and restoring cars such as 2 Triumph TR6s. Many happy memories, alas we didn't stay in the house for too long as there was an opportunity that couldn't be missed.
This third house in the village was opposite the first house. It was an older house with farm outhouses for keeping goats, chickens etc. It had a fairly large amount of land with mature apple trees on them. My dad bought the house, sold off the two ends of the land and had planned to then build an extension on the main house. However we moved before the extension was built. Looking over the fence on our recent visit the extension has been built by a subsequent owner. I would have been in this house from the age of around 10 to 12 years old.
This aerial photo shows the original land for the house in red and then the sub divisions in yellow. We kept the middle plot and house.
This stream below doesn't look like much however it was where Nick, Caroline and I spent many hours daring each other to jump across, and for someone who is 6-10 years old that was a big jump!
The village of Cherhill is in Wiltshire and an area broadly known as the 'Vale of the White Horse' where there are many historic burial mounds and more recent
white horse chalk monuments on the hillsides. The hill you see here is where we often walked up and also in the winter, snow permitting, would sledge. Photo from the road.
Two aerial shots, the first shows the edge of the village, the White Horse and the monument with the second being a close up of the White Horse itself.
Not far from Cherhill is Avebury and Silbury Hill. These are both significant pre-historic sites of interest.
Avebury
The larger, although less famous relative of Stone Henge.
Avebury is the site of an ancient monument consisting of a large henge, several stone circles, stone avenues and barrows, surrounding the village of Avebury in the English county of Wiltshire. It is one of the finest and largest Neolithic monuments in Europe, about 5,000 years old. Although older than the megalithic stages of Stonehenge 32 kilometres (20 mi) to the south, the two monuments are broadly contemporary overall.
The following shows how it may have looked before the stones were taken and used for building the local village and other buildings. Much of the destruction happened on the orders of the Christian church who were trying to remove links with pagan mythology and rituals.
This is how Avebury looks now. While many of the stones are gone the original mound and ditch are still clearly visible from the air.
Some of the remaining stones, they are typically 12+ foot high (around 3.5+ metres)
Silbury Hill
At 37 metres (120 ft) high,
Silbury Hill – which is part of the complex of Neolithic monuments around Avebury, which includes the Avebury Ring and West Kennet Long Barrow – is the tallest prehistoric human-made mound in Europe and one of the largest in the world; it is similar in size to some of the smaller Egyptian pyramids of the Giza Necropolis. Its purpose however, is still highly debated.
While the public are not allowed to climb the hill the view is pretty spectacular. The hill may not look that impressive from the photo however when you consider that it was built without modern tools and is thousands of years old then the scale of it becomes more thought provoking.
Aerial shot and photo from the viewing location follow
Acknowledgment to Google Maps for the aerial views.
