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JUDGING has begun for this year’s keenly-fought competition to find Wiltshire s best-kept villages. The Campaign to Protect Rural England s Wiltshire Best-Kept Village Competition is once again being sponsored by The Hills Group and Princeton Homes. The annual competition was cancelled last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, 28 villages have entered. CPRE project officer Mike Manson said: It seeks to find the villages that are best looked after by their inhabitants and where community spirit is strong. It is not aimed at finding the prettiest villages but rather those where villagers make the best of their surroundings. Judging in the first round, within each of the four former districts of Wiltshire, will continue until mid-June.
A SCOTTISH study is to look at the modern-day phenomenon of why people are wishing to be buried like their prehistoric ancestors. Glasgow University archaeologist Dr Kenny Brophy and researcher Andrew Watson have received a British Academy Leverhulme small grant to undertake research. The new trend has seen modern versions of prehistoric burial mounds called barrows being built to contain the cremation ashes of the deceased. There are now over 10 of these buildings in operation or in the planning process across the UK, each with design elements taken from megalithic burial mounds from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. The first was at The Long Barrow at All Cannings, Wiltshire, in 2014, built by Tim Daw, and since then several barrows have been built by Sacred Stones and other private owners.
It is one way of getting in touch with the ancestors, though perhaps a bit more ghoulish than simply researching a family tree. Experts at the University of Glasgow is to embark on an investigation of a modern-day phenomenon which has seen a rise in the number of people wishing to be buried like their prehistoric forebears. The new trend has seen modern versions of prehistoric burial mounds called barrows being built to contain the cremation ashes of the deceased. There are now over ten of these buildings in operation or in the planning process across the UK, each with design elements taken from megalithic burial mounds from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods.
A meal at the pub, in All Cannings near Devizes, had been months in the making. I’d had one late drink there when I first moved to Wiltshire, to the nearby Wedhampton, last October and had been intrigued by the extensive menu, that went against the often blasé phrase ‘pub grub’. But a national lockdown soon followed, so it wasn’t until last week that I finally made it back. The Kings Arms, nestled away in All Cannings, feels nearly hidden away down a series of roads in the village. A popular spot for walkers and cyclists, it’s also a huge part of local life.