The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the “lower ground.” So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great deal higher, and much more hilly than the “upper ground” between London and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach driven by a gay young blade, one “Jack Everett;” an accident in which he and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, “I have often kissed a young woman, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t kiss an old one”—and he suited the action to the words.

Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the “Waggon and Horses,” is the place mentioned by Dickens in the “Bagman’s Story” in the Pickwick Papers. It remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,[5] but does not very closely resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before, for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the “Lansdowne Column” is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front. Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could find, this “column,” which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts of the West County and date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is supposed to be visible for thirty miles—which there is no occasion to believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little curious.

No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.

The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk descending upon him down the slope.

Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.