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Roundway Down
20 Wiltshire Scenes (13a)
Roundway Down is a plateau at the end of a ridge running between the Vale of Pewsey and the course of the Avon to the north. But it stops abruptly, facing the open Wiltshire plain, a geographical feature that partly led to the unexpected defeat of superior Parliamentarian forces in one of the shortest battles of the English Civil War. Even on the most summery of afternoons, as it may have been on the 13th of July 1643, the slopes of Roundway Down have an ominous look to them.
The Roundheads were led by Sir William Waller who had marched from Bath after retreating from the inconclusive Battle of Lansdown Hill eight days earlier. He positioned his 3,000 foot and 2,000 horse soldiers on Roundway Down and proceeded to fire canon shot into the Royalist positions a short distance away in Devizes where Sir Ralph Hopton was besieged. A Royalist relief force of 1,800 men under Lord Wilmot, which had advanced from the north, found itself blocked by Waller's positions. The Parliamentarians had the upper hand and the weaker Royalist force of Lord Wilmot had to charge uphill... but Waller made a mistake by advancing to meet his opponent on level ground where he was soundly outclassed by Wilmot's cavalry and unable to receive covering fire from his own canon. As Clarendon the contemporary historian wrote at the time...
"Sir William Waller out of pure gaiety, departed from an advantage he could not recover."
The rest, as they say, is history. Neither side knew of the steep drop on the other side of the battlefield (as seen in the above image) and Waller's routed horsemen plunged to their deaths in what is now known as Bloody Ditch. Witnesses in Devizes said...
"...in a sudden we could see the Enemy's whole body of horse face about and run with speed, and our horses in close body firing in their rear, 'till they chased them down a hill in a steep place where never a horse went down nor up before."
It was a surprising Royalist victory... over 600 Parliamentarians were killed and all Waller's guns, ammunition and baggage were captured. The scene was later called "Runaway Down" by soldiers who had been there... a name which would still be appropriate because it is much too steep to descend with a slow and sure step without breaking into a stumbling and dangerous run.
to... Devizes
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