Bowerchalke

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Bowerchalke

Coordinates: 51.0043° N 1.9762° W
Population	378^[1]
OS grid reference	SU017227
District	Salisbury
Shire county	Wiltshire
Region	South West
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SALISBURY
Postcode district	SP5
Dial code	01722
Police	Wiltshire
Fire	Wiltshire
Ambulance	Great Western
UK Parliament	Salisbury
European Parliament	South West England
List of places: UK • England • Wiltshire

Bowerchalke or Bower Chalke is a village and civil parish in the Salisbury district of Wiltshire, England, about twelve miles east of Shaftesbury, approximately one mile from both Hampshire and Dorset county boundaries. It is located within the 'Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty'. It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and the River Chalke, a classic chalk stream, rises in the village and joins the River Ebble at Broad Chalke, flowing into the River Avon south of Salisbury. According to the 2001 census, it had a population of 378.

The Nobel prize winning novelist William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, etc is buried in the village churchyard of the Holy Trinity, having lived the the middle part of his life in a cottage on the banks of the River Chalke. He also named the Gaia hypothesis which was conceived by Dr James Lovelock who lived in the village from circa 1960-1980 at both 'Pixies Cottage' Misselfore and at 'Clovers Cottage' Mead End. His daughter Christine A Lovelock is an internationally noted athlete and artist, exhibiting paintings of both the village and nearby Marleycombe Down. [1] [2] [3]

International violinist Iona Brown lived in the village at 'Misselfore Cottage' from 1968 until her death in 2004. When she took part in BBC Radio 4 Kaleidoscope explaining how hard it was to play her signature piece The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams, she said that the lark song during long walks on nearby 'Marleycombe Down' was a central tenet of her performance.

A hoard of 17 gold staters (coins) used by the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe, was discovered by metal detectorists near Bowerchalke. The Durotriges tribe lived in South Wiltshire and Dorset before the Roman occupation, became Romanised by circa AD 79 and gave their name to Dorset. Examples of the coins are now displayed in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. [4] A second hoard of 2 gold rings and 5 silver coins dated to 389 AD was found in 2002 nearby the original location. [5]

The Bowerchalke Barrel Urn was excavated in 1925 by Mr R Clay, from the the bowl barrow on 'Marleycombe Down'. The repaired barrel urn is part of the collection at Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes. [6]

William Thick was born in 1845 at 'Misselfore Green' but left the village in 1868 to join the Metropolitan Police at Whitechapel in London (warrant No 49989). In 1889, while investigating the Whitechapel murders, Sergeant Thick was named in letters as a prospective perpetrator, to wit I have very good grounds to believe that the person who has committed the Whitechapel Murders is a member of the police force. ...Sergeant William Thick ... Sergeant Thick is no longer a suspect. [7]

From 1878 until 1924 a unique village newspaper was written, printed, published and sold for a farthing by the Reverend Edward Collett, documenting the social history of the village. The papers were researched and published by Rex Sawyer as The Bowerchalke Parish Papers in 1989 after he had discovered the original printing press in his garden. In 2004 they were republished as Collett's Farthing Newspaper: the Bowerchalke Village Newspaper, 1878-1924 [8] (ISBN 0-946418-22-5)

The village school closed in 1976 and children from Bowerchalke now attend the thriving school in neighbouring Broad Chalke. Construction of a new (and much larger) school at Broad Chalke started in 2006.

The once renowned village cricket team, thanks in part to the dynasty of 'cricketing Gullivers' (Brian, David, Derek, Richard and Robin), closed circa 1980.

The village pub, The Bell Inn, closed in 1988 and is now a residential dwelling known as 'Bell House'.

The village Post Office and General Stores closed in 2003. The nearest Post Office is now in the neighbouring village of Broad Chalke.

An article with the somewhat questionable title 'Village of the Damned' written by David McKie was published in The Guardian on 30 June 2005.

The Village Hall is now located across the road from the Church in the old school buildings.

The village was the location for the fire in John Schlesinger's 1967 film of Thomas Hardy's novel Far from the Madding Crowd. at 51°0′30.75″N, 1°59′18.30″W.

Bowerchalke and the Chalke Valley, looking north east from the top of the chalk escarpment.

[edit] Geology

The rocks of Bowerchalke that can be seen today were deposited underwater between 120 and 70 million years ago (mya) until they were then uplifted from the sea and have been sculpted by periglacial weathering and erosion over the last 1 million years.

The unseen underlying rocks of Bowerchalke started to form in shallow seas surrounding volcanic islands up to 1,000 million years ago (Proterozoic), circa 60-70 degrees south of the equator, the latitude of present day Argentina. 'Proto-Bowerchalke' and the rest of England and Wales are part of Avalonia, a micro-continent that broke away from the southern landmass, and was 50 degrees south of the equator circa 500 mya. It joined with Baltica just south of the equator 400 mya, and was crushed between Baltica, and Laurasia (North America), and Gondwanaland (Africa, Australia, Antarctica and South America) 350 mya whilst near the equator (Variscan orogeny). Avalonia was landlocked and buffeted within Pangea just north of the equator 270 mya, and became part of a desert in the northern tropics 230 mya. Eventually it formed the west coast of Eurasia as America split away to form the Atlantic Ocean 120 mya. Bowerchalke then laid under chalk forming seas until being uplifted 70 mya (Alpine Orogeny), and in the cool shallow waters river clay sediments capped the chalk. In the last million years the periglacial weathering has completely removed several hundred feet of chalk.

The main portion of the village is formed on the unique 'Bowerchalke greensand inlier' (an area of older rock completely surrounded by younger layers), highlighted in green on the adjacent map. It is not immediately obvious to the naked eye or on the standard Ordnance Survey maps with 10 metre contours [9] but the apex is strikingly characterised by the 'island' drawn on the Andrews 1773 map. Its presence can be detected in the friable sandy soils in the centre of the village.

Geological overview of Bowerchalke

The Greensand inlier is a slightly dome shaped area of hard, coarse, olive-green coloured sandstone rock which has had its covering of softer chalk eroded away by 60 million years of weathering since the region was lifted out of the sea. The Cretaceous Upper Greensand is circa 120 million years old and was deposited in brackish, oxygen depleted, water when Bowerchalke was located at around 35 degrees north of the equator, roughly equivalent to southern Spain and Portugal. At that time it was still part of the supercontinent Pangea which was just starting to split and form the Atlantic ocean. The nearest continuous Upper Greensand exposure is along the A30 in the Nadder valley at Fovant. The closest 'unique greensand inlier' is near Andover in Hampshire.

Surrounding the greensand is a ring of younger Lower Cretaceous Chalk which is circa 100 million years old (darker blue on the adjacent map). The chalk was formed in warm, shallow, well oxygenated waters from the remains of micro-organisms (coccolithophores), over millions of years. At this time the Atlantic Ocean was circa 100 miles wide and Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Somerset were a single island with rivers draining their nutrients into the warm sea that covered Wiltshire, Hampshire, the east of England, Northern France, Denmark and northern Germany.

Surrounding the lower chalk is a ringlike region of still younger Middle Cretaceous chalk (circa 80 my)(light blue on the adjacent map). The whole area is bounded by the 'vast expanse' of Upper Cretacious chalk (shown white on the adjacent map) that continued to form when Bowerchalke was circa 45 degrees north, roughly equivalent to Bordeaux or the Dordogne in France. It was still under a shallow sea but Somerset, Ireland and Scotland had become separate islands. Bowerchalke was probably 15-30 miles offshore from the 'coast' between Shaftesbury and Dorchester.

Above the exposed Cretaceous chalk slopes of Marleycombe the hilltops are covered with a very young layer of Pleistocene 'Clay with Flint' that is circa 1-10 million years old and formed by alluvial sediments in cold shallow waters (pink on the adjacent map). The flints were formed in multiple layers as the clay sediment built up, and were then concentrated into a single dense layer as the last million years of sub glacial weathering washed the minute clay particles away.

The steepness of the north facing Marleycombe Down contrasts with the gentle rolling slopes towards Ebbesbourne Wake. This is mainly due to erosion during the sustained permafrost and tundra like conditions in the periglacial zones of multiple ice ages. Although the southern limit of the main glaciation is a line across North Wiltshire that corresponds to the M4 corridor, the sun never melted the north facing snow pockets on Marlecombe Down, thus they eroded the soft chalks and clays by eating back into them, leaving the very steep scarp faces. The sporadic melting of snow and ice was forced to drain north east along the course of the River Chalke and River Ebble in occasional summers, plus scouring the now dry channel that forms Church Street and Costers Lane. The southern boundary between the greensand and chalk, is concealed beneath a layer of heavy clay that has accumulated at the bottom Marleycombe Down due to the periglacial solifluction. This scouring has also located the natural spring that supplies the River Chalke. The rainfall from the surrounding watershed, having been filtered and channeled through the porous chalk, rises at the natural spring at 'Mead End' where the water table sits on the underlying impervious greensand layer.