Amesbury Church once belonged to the Priory.  Its appearance from the outside gives the impression that it is unrestored.  This is not the case, however, for the drastic restoration and partial rebuilding has taken place at various times.  The architecture is Norman and Early English with Decorated windows in the chancel.  The double two-storied chamber at the side of the north transept consists of a priest’s room with a chapel below.  The grounds of the Priory at the back of the church are very lovely, the river forming the boundary on one side.  Amesbury town is pleasant and even picturesque, and the Avon in its immediate neighbourhood may be described as beautiful.  It is the nearest place to Stonehenge in which accommodation may be had and is also a good centre for the exploration of the Plain.  The western road runs in the direction of Stonehenge.  On the crown of the hill to the right, just before reaching West Amesbury, the so-called “Vespasian’s Camp” is seen.  This is undoubtedly a prehistoric earthwork.

[Illustration:  AMESBURY CHURCH.]

The description of Salisbury Plain in the Ingoldsby Legends is hardly accurate now:—­

  “Not a shrub nor a tree,
  Not a bush can we see,
  No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no styles,
  Much less a house or a cottage for miles.”

The usual accompaniment of the chalk—­small “tufts” of foliage, that become spinneys when close at hand, dot the surface of the great plateau.  Green, becoming yellow in the middle distance and toward the horizon french-grey, are the prevailing hues of the Plain, but at times when huge masses of cloud cast changing shadows on the short sward beneath, the colours are kaleidoscopic in their bewildering change.  This immense table-land, from which all the chalk hills of England take their eastward way, covers over three-fifths of Wiltshire if we include that northern section usually called the Marlborough Downs.

We now approach the mysterious Stones that have caused more conjecture and wonder than any work of man in these islands or in Europe and of which more would-be descriptive rubbish has been written in a highfalutin strain than of any other memorial of the past.  Such phrases as “majestic temple of our far-off ancestors,” “stupendous conception of a dead civilization” and the like, can only bring about a feeling of profound disappointment when Stonehenge is actually seen.  To all who experience such disappointment the writer would strongly urge a second or third pilgrimage.  Come to the Stones on a gloomy day in late October or early March when the surface of the great expanse of the Plain reflects, as water would, the leaden lowering skies.  Then perhaps the tragic mystery of the place will fire the imagination as no other scene the wide world over could.  Stonehenge is unique whichever way one looks at it.  In its age, its uncouth savage strength, and its secretiveness.  That it will hold that secret to the end of time, notwithstanding the clever and plausible guesses of archaeologist and astronomer, is almost beyond any doubt, and it is well that it should be so.