Old Sarum, Pitt-Rivers and famous mosaics: local insight at the Chalke Valley History Festival

ANOTHER successful year for the Chalke Valley History Festival, saw thousands of people flock to a valley in Broad Chalke to witness one of the UK’s, if not the world’s best events dedicated to history.

From hard hitting talks with the biggest names working in, or publishing about, history, to re-enactments and living history, the phrase ‘there really is something for everyone’ seems somehow too slight.

My working week meant I could only choose one day and so I plumped for Thursday (29 June) and a number of talks featuring local landmarks and personalities.

Alex Langlands, once of Time Team fame, is a landscape archaeologist whose enthusiasm for his subject is enough to get anyone excited in ditches and excavated drains.

For a number of years he has been conducting research into Old Sarum, its development from Iron Age fort to Norman stronghold and beyond.

For someone who walks there regularly, Alex’s talk revealed secrets and new ideas that will make me look at the place anew next time I visit.

The director of Salisbury Museum, Adrien Green, then presented a fascinating talk alongside Alice Plunkett, about General Pitt-Rivers, for many, as the talk’s title suggested, the father of modern scientific archaeology.

The Pitt-Rivers family’s estates stretch across the

Cranborne Chase, where Pitt-Rivers developed his passion and his methodologies that still define much of archaeological practices to this day.

The family’s estates stretch further west into Dorset at Hinton St Mary, where a famous mosaic was discovered in the 1960s.

Thought by some to be the earliest depiction of Jesus Christ, by others to a Christian Emperor, Peter Guest (pictured) revealed the latest thinking amid new excavations at the site that aim to answer a number of very important questions.

Among them, what buildings were at the site (it was thought to be a villa, but now seems unlikely) and what else is there, which could help to answer the question as to why the famous mosaic was placed there in the first place.

The talks are just one part of the experience and you can spend a day simply walking around the site and taking in the demonstrations and meeting the fascinating people who help to keep (and bring) history to life.

And if you were there on Thursday and witnessed the gun firing… have your ears recovered?