Wiltshire

Um, I did attend.

Uh, Jim was otherwise engaged at a music festival on the Dorset-Wiltshire border as we've just discovered, that I didn't know it was that close to the Dorset-Wiltshire border.

So apparently the field was a border itself.

Yes.

Depending on what stage I was at in, I was, uh, different counties, I believe.

But everybody thought it was Dorset, but apparently it was m- mainly Wiltshire.

Very good.

Um, but not that it makes any difference.

Picture a night in the spring of 1662 somewhere in Wiltshire.

The house is dark, the fire burned low, above you in the attic it begins.

First a knock, then a rhythm, a drum roll, a military march beaten by no one at all.

We watched the Inquisition of Logroño in 1610 shape old Basque figures and ancient folk belief into a witches sabbath.

With the help of a demonology that came from outside, from handbooks and learned minds that never understood the land itself, strangers imposed their own story on a whole landscape.

Today, we travel north to England, to a quiet village in Wiltshire, to a house that became the most famous haunted house in the country for two long years.

And we ask once again the question that holds this whole series together.

Who tells the story and why? Because what happened in that house we still don't know for certain, but we can say with real precision who had an interest in it happening that way and not another.

They came to Britain in September 1943 and remained here for nine months, preparing alongside other Allied troops for the D-Day invasion.

Their training camp was located near the village of Aldbourne in Wiltshire.

MOD archaeologist Richard Osgood is on site with members of Operation Nightingale.

This is an initiative using archaeology to support the recovery of military personnel injured in conflict.

This was the first time these young soldiers had left their base in America.

Some of them described it as the best accommodation they had in the whole war, and others said they felt like they were on a Hollywood film set because this village is so beautiful.

But the paratroopers would soon leave this quaint Wiltshire village far behind.

In the early hours of 6 June 1944, the men of Easy Company were dropped behind enemy lines in Normandy.

It was 34 degrees and we didn't take any food because of these pubs recommended.

And bearing in mind, this was the countryside just outside a very popular tourist town in Wiltshire.

Every pub we went past, and there were three in total, were closed.

What?! ! Everything was closed on a Monday and Tuesday.

Edward Courtney, with his brother Piers, Bishop of Exeter, raised forces in Devonshire and Cornwall.

In Kent, Richard Guildford and others did the like, and there were risings at the same time in Berkshire and in Wiltshire.

Maidstone, Newbury, Salisbury and Exeter were the four points at which a simultaneous movement had been planned to begin over the south of England.

But the rebellion failed, more perhaps from physical causes, which it was impossible to forecast, than from some suddenly awakened activity and watchfulness of Richard.

The constable of Castile so plied his master's business, in which he spared for no cost, that he procured a peace so advantageous for Spain, and so disadvantageous for England, that it and all christendom have since both seen and felt the lamentable effects thereof there was not one courtier of note that tasted not of spain's bounty either in gold or jewels and among them not any in so large a proportion as the countess of suffolk who shared in her lord's interest being then a potent man and in that interest which she had in being mistress to that little great secretary little in body and stature but great in wit and policy the sole manager of state affairs so it may be said she was a double sharer and in truth audley end that famous and great structure had its foundation of spanish gold end of section two section three of the court and character of king james whereunto is now added the court of king charles by anthony weldon the court of king james the king was a peaceable and merciful prince yet god for some secret intent best known to himself laid the foundation of his reign with the greatest mortality ever before heard of in this kingdom by a fearful plague and some by that judged what his future reign would be, yet their wisdoms failed, for he was a king of mercy as well as peace, never cruel, yet surely it had some moral.

He was forced by that contagion to leave the metropolis and go into a by-corner in Wiltshire, Wilton, the Earl of Pembroke's house, in which time of his abode there a kind of treason break forth, but what it was as no man could then tell so it is left with so dark a comment that posterity will never understand the text or remember any such treason it is true some lost their lives yet the world was never satisfied of the justice and one of them and that the only mark of tyranny upon this good king's reign executed many years after without all precedent and on my conscience without any just cause and even against that good king's will, who in many things was overawed by his timorous disposition.

But the Spanish faction and Spanish gold betrayed his life, as they had done the kingdom before, and I believe it was one of the greatest masterpieces of that ambassador to purchase Rolly's head.

Yet had not Bristol co-operated, the king would never have consented.

Certainly the lady offered me the cup, said More, though long after the decree was given, and I did accept it out of courtesy.

At these words the Earl of Wiltshire, father of Anne Boleyn, exclaimed in glee, Aha! Did I not tell you, my lords, that you would find the matter true? And now perhaps my Lord of Wiltshire would like to hear the end of the tale, suggested More quietly.

When I had received the cup, I caused my butler to fill it with wine, drank to the lady, and made her pledge me again.

I did then oblige her to receive back the cup once more, and to take it as a New Year's gift to her husband.

And I can always remember years ago, I was, I worked to the BBC as a, I was presenting a breakfast programme, a local breakfast programme.

And in Wiltshire, we have the huge army bases around us.

And a guy came in and he wanted to organize some training and some stuff with some of the guys from the army and said, you know, some of them will have to, you know, be faced by the media.

And I said, yeah, absolutely fine.

But between him and the sea lay some of the most formidable obstacles of the ancient world.

The British hill forts were especially massive and numerous in the west, stretching in an arc from Wiltshire up to the Welsh border.

Vespasian's master stroke was to see that these citadels of soil might fall to artillery.

Inside these mighty earthworks lay flimsy villages of thatch and timber.