And yet another video
And yet another video
This time I went to Westbury, in Wiltshire, or ‘Westbury-under-the-Plain’ as it is sometimes known, a Hardyesque name to allude to its site at the edge of Salisbury Plain. There is a White Horse carved into the hill but I only glimpsed it from the train arriving.
A misty coming we had of it – mist hanging over a village station so that I thought of turning back at Bath and going for a coffee and going home, but in the end I persevered and found myself a mile from Westbury (the station is that far because of the route of the line, although as it was originally the terminus, extended later, I wonder).
Westbury itself is compact, and 19th century largely, a wool town, made from the weaving of wool, and I seem to be drawn to such places like Lyon (silk weavers in its case), and Stroud. Once it was a thriving industrial metropolis, a kind of Bradford of the south, and now it is a drowsing town woken only by the thunder of lorries along the road to the west side of the town, as the long-asked-for bypass has yet to be built. The town has a 19th century swimming pool, one of few of such vintage still in use. And a clustering of pubs most of which are still in use, and a church. Its population is less than 20,000, but it is a town below the plain and it holds its ownness dear.
See the video here: