Salisbury Plain and Related Topics

Wiltshire

Historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of 3485 km2.

The County Ground, Swindon is the home of Swindon Town, the only football league club in Wiltshire

A bridge over the River Avon at Bradford-on-Avon

The flight of 16 locks at Caen Hill on the Kennet and Avon Canal

Salisbury Plain is noted for being the location of the Stonehenge and Avebury stone circles (which together are a UNESCO Cultural and World Heritage site ) and other ancient landmarks, and as a training area for the British Army.

Larkhill

Garrison town in the civil parish of Durrington, Wiltshire, England.

Memorial to Capt Loraine and Staff-Sgt Wilson, killed 1912, outside the Stonehenge Visitors' Centre (December 2013)

It is now one of the main garrisons on Salisbury Plain, along with Tidworth Camp, Bulford Camp, and Waterloo Lines at Warminster.

River Wylye

Chalk stream in the south of England, with clear water flowing over gravel.

The river passes through or touches the parishes of Bishopstrow, Norton Bavant, Heytesbury, Knook, Upton Lovell, Boyton, Codford, Stockton, Wylye and Wilton, near the southern edge of Salisbury Plain.

Old Sarum

Now ruined and deserted site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury.

An 1829 sketch of Old Sarum by John Constable, displaying the site of the abandoned hillfort

A 1916 plan of Old Sarum by the Ordnance Survey (300 ft ≈ 92 m)

The present ruins: the exposed foundations of the cathedral in the foreground and the Norman central motte behind

The exposed foundations of the cathedral

This heyday of the settlement lasted for around 300 years until disputes between the Sheriff of Wiltshire and the Bishop of Salisbury finally led to the removal of the church into the nearby plain.

Hampshire

County in South East England on the coast of the English Channel.

Plaque on Freemantle Common marking the route of the Roman Road from Chichester to Bitterne

Portchester combined Roman and Norman castles

South West Hampshire & South East Dorset green belt (shown in green)

Hampshire County Council offices and Jubilee Fountain

Ageas Bowl cricket ground, West End, 2010

Fratton Park football ground, Portsmouth, from Milton End, 2006

Former Hampshire Chronicle office in Winchester, circa 1999

Hampshire played a crucial role in both World Wars due to the large Royal Navy naval base at Portsmouth, the army camp at Aldershot, and the military Netley Hospital on Southampton Water, as well as its proximity to the army training ranges on Salisbury Plain and the Isle of Purbeck.

Chalk Group

Lithostratigraphic unit (a certain number of rock strata) which contains the Upper Cretaceous limestone succession in southern and eastern England.

The Needles, (Isle of Wight); part of southern England's extensive chalk outcrop.

Fossil echinoid Echinocorys from the Chalk Group of England

Contact between two units of the lithostratigraphy of South England: the Chalk Group (left, white, upper unit) and the Greensand Formation (right, green, lower unit). Location: Lulworth Cove, near West Lulworth, Dorset, England.

The broadly western margin of the Chalk outcrop is marked, from northeast to southwest, to south by the Chalk downlands of the Yorkshire Wolds, the Lincolnshire Wolds, a subdued feature through western Norfolk, including Breckland, the Chiltern Hills, the Berkshire Downs, Marlborough Downs and the western margins of Salisbury Plain and Cranborne Chase and the North and South Dorset Downs.

Guglielmo Marconi

Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system.

Marconi's first transmitter incorporating a monopole antenna. It consisted of an elevated copper sheet (top) connected to a Righi spark gap (left) powered by an induction coil (center) with a telegraph key (right) to switch it on and off to spell out text messages in Morse code.

British Post Office engineers inspect Marconi's radio equipment during a demonstration on Flat Holm Island, 13 May 1897. The transmitter is at centre, the coherer receiver below it, and the pole supporting the wire antenna is visible at top.

Plaque on the outside of the BT Centre commemorates Marconi's first public transmission of wireless signals.

SS Ponce entering New York Harbor 1899, by Milton J. Burns

Marconi watching associates raising the kite (a "Levitor" by B.F.S. Baden-Powell ) used to lift the antenna at St. John's, Newfoundland, December 1901

Magnetic detector by Marconi used during the experimental campaign aboard a ship in summer 1902, exhibited at the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan.

Marconi demonstrating apparatus he used in his first long-distance radio transmissions in the 1890s. The transmitter is at right, the receiver with paper tape recorder at left.

Marconi caricatured by Leslie Ward for Vanity Fair, 1905

Villa Marconi, with Marconi's tomb in foreground.

American electrical engineer Alfred Norton Goldsmith and Marconi on 26 June 1922.

Memorial plaque in the Basilica Santa Croce, Florence. Italy

Guglielmo Marconi Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Bronze statue of Guglielmo Marconi, sculpted by Saleppichi Giancarlo erected 1975 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

A further series of demonstrations for the British followed, and, by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 km across Salisbury Plain.