A view from The Cherry Orchard

This is another of our 19^th century sketches by Philip Wynell Mayow. Philip was the brother of Mayow Wynell Mayow who was Vicar of market Lavington for about twenty years from the 1830s to the 1850s.

For this drawing, Philip had headed up to the north of the parish and sketched the view he saw.

View from Cherry Orchard – 1837

Cherry Orchard still exists as a house. It is on what we now call Kings Road, very close to the top of Ledge Hill.

The sketch is captioned.

It says, From the Cherry orchard – 11^th August 1837.

There are aspects of the view which can be recognised – not least towards the left hand (or western) edge of the sketch. This shows the downs in the Bratton/Westbury area.

This would look more familiar to many if it had the chimney, now disused, at the former Westbury Cement works. Many people regard that chimney as an iconic landmark. It was erected in the 1960s and may cease to be a feature in the landscape quite soon.

This part of the image, to the right of the tall trees, is looking towards the Marlborough Downs.

But above all, this sketch has allowed Philip to indulge his passion for trees.

 

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A view of the village in the 1960s

The presence of Lavington Hill and Salisbury Plain is a draw for photographers, keen to get what looks like an aerial view of Market Lavington. This one dates from the 1960s so is fifty years old now.

Market Lavington from the Downs – 1960s

This would be taken from somewhere near where the reservoir is now. We can see the road down Lavington Hill wending downwards from near the bottom left corner. The village itself looks distant and is not amazingly distinct. We can make out St Mary’s church near the left.

The village and the church

Perhaps most interesting is the farm trailer on the recently cultivated strip.

The trailer on the hill

This now has the look of something from past times, which, indeed, it is. A small two wheeled trailer is laden with small bales of the kind that a single person can manhandle. The load looks like hay but these days that area is always arable so it is more likely straw. For comparison let’s look at a bit of May 2015 grass cutting.

2015 farming – poles apart from the methods of the 1960s

A huge 4 wheel drive tractor is travelling at high speed (20 mph?) through a field being cut for silage. It cuts a huge swathe on each pass. One cutter is in front of the tractor and two others are to the side and behind. The tractor cab roof bristles with lamps. A field of several acres is cut in a quarter of an hour. This would all be beyond the imagination of the 1960s farmer.

A Bird’s Eye View

Messrs Tomkins and Barrett of Swindon, who published this colour tinted photo of Market Lavington have captioned it as Bird’s Eye View, Market Lavington.

Bird’s Eye View of Market Lavington

I think we’d call it a view from the hill. The image just has the church on the extreme left. The printing process employed is certainly not the sharpest. If the colours are anything like correct we can certainly see why roads leading up onto the downs were called White Street.

This card was posted in Market Lavington.

Message and address

It was posted on March 9^th 1908 and as was often the way with Edwardian postcards, the message is written in a different orientation from the address. It made it that bit harder for a postman to read.

The sender was M Baker – This could have been one of three sisters, Margaret, Mabel or Mollie. Their father, John, had held the ironmongers shop and we have had many artefacts given by members of that family. These three sisters all emigrated to Canada.

Market Lavington from the hill

In un-glorious Technicolor

Market Lavington is oft times called, ‘The Village under the Plain’. Salisbury Plain, and in particular Lavington Hill looks down on the village and since photography began it was an obvious location to set up a camera and take a picture. There are many variations on this theme with photos taken in different years, at different times of year and pointing in different directions. We have quite a collection of such photos, many of which were offered for sale as postcards throughout the twentieth century. Today we are looking at one which really is just a bit fanciful. It is a hand colour tinted version of a photo. We have it dated at early twentieth century.

Lavington from the hill – an Edwardian hand coloured postcard

Our photographer – who was probably originally Alf Burgess, has stood half way up Lavington Hill. An artist has added colour to the photo, possibly based on notes written down when the photo was taken or possibly he has just guessed what colours to use. It is, presumably, high summer, turning into autumn for a corn field is being harvested and appears to have sheaves of corn in it. It looks as though people on the right of the scene are standing them up in stooks.

The colours do not ring quite true. Houses in the village look too bright and white. The foreground appears too dark and black. But let’s applaud the effort to add colour to a scene at a time when photography was only in monochrome.