It is the village pond that provides the focal point, with a backdrop of elegant rectory - and church tower peeping from behind - well kept cottages and a working farm. In late spring the flowering blossom trees shower their pink petals across the water's surface whilst families of ducks dabble and unceremoniously up-end themselves. The overhanging cedar tree provides shade for the weary when needed most in high summer; and the winter freezes give children and like-minded adults the opportunity to safely slide along its frozen surface - although ice-skating is seemingly a pastime that has all but disappeared.

Wiltshire's village ponds were not for pleasure and relaxation in times gone by. They have played an important role in provided drinking water for both man and beast, as well as washing and cleansing facilities for some households that bothered with such fundamental chores. Those basic necessities were usually carried out without any regard for hygiene nor how one would affect the other.

Many ponds were also a source of food... fish being an important and replenishable year-round supply of protein. The few animals kept were used more as beasts of burden to work the ploughshare and to transport wood-fuel gathered from far and wide.

Tradition and folklore also played their parts. Ducking-stools (scroll down "Chambers' 1869 Book of Days" page to "The Ways Shrews Were Tamed Long Ago" were used to punish miscreants, some not surviving their ordeal. And from folklore, the nickname Moonrakers derived from their supposed "raking of a cheese" from a nearby village pond one moonlit night and thwarting the bemused Excise man.

Urchfont has most things those escaping from a city life would swap – so it's a pity that the peace is routinely overshadowed by the Army whose firing ranges are bordered by the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain just above the village. The Army have been there since the 1914-18 Great War, and in the past 35 years over 9 million large-calibre artillery rounds have been fired there. No wonder that 10,000 hectares (just over a quarter of the total area controlled by the Army) is permanently closed to the public.

Where there is access, several footpaths climb up to the Plain to join the Great Ridgeway path that traverses Wiltshire on its continuation from Avebury to the south coast in Dorset... but on any day when the red flags are flying above the guarding vedettes, the singing of unseen larks overhead will be drowned out by the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire, the crump of howitzer or mortar shells landing in the not too distant impact area, or even more ominous, the eerie turbofan hum of A-10 Thunderbolt "Tank Buster" aircraft, aptly named Warthogs for their looks, swooping in pairs and turning tightly at right-angles to each other as they fire-off bursts of deadly 30mm canon fire at the rate of 3,900 rounds per minute from their Gatling guns. Urchfont and its pond are definitely for a day when the red flags aren't flying.

One would think that the cacophony created by the Army would be enough to scare hungry birds from feeding in the villagers' gardens and farmers' fields. No so apparently... for Urchfont plays host to a Scarecrow Festival held every year at end of April... and the distinguished visitors appear disguised as window cleaners, nuns, policemen and "cereal" killers to name a few.

As for the red flags and scarecrows... one could be forgiven for thinking Urchfont an unfriendly place to visit. But the opposite is the case... and with nearby Devizes and Roundway Down, Westbury White Horse, Corn stooks, Great Bedwyn stone museum and Wilton windmill, make an interesting day out through the Vales of Westbury and Pewsey.

A plug for a great resource...
When researching for this series of "Wanderings in Wiltshire" I have refered to Michael Hillman’s hyperlinked and searchable "Chambers' Book of Days - A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature, and Oddities of Human Life and Character." It's an amazing compilation of detailed descriptions of key historical events, the life and times of people, both great and infamous, and long forgotten customs of cultures from every corner of the world. A must-read for anyone aspiring to understand history as our forefathers saw, experienced and wrote about it.

It took a year long effort putting the book's contents on-line, and when using the CD all the many hundreds of pages appear in a flash... and searches take a fraction of the time they do on the web. The extensive hyperlinking allows you to jump back and forth, as Chambers might have done had he been reading the stories.

The "Searchable Chambers' Book Of Days" is just $14.95 + $1.95 shipping to USA & Canada ($2.95 airmail Rest of World) and can be purchased using PayPal or cheque via a link on the website. Note that 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the CD will be applied to the cost of keeping the website operational and advertising free.

If history doesn't do anything for the grey matter have a look at some of Mike Hillman's stories... his "The Real History of the Strawberry Daiquiri" will have you clicking to read more... and did I mention his Horse and Riding Articles?