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Tisbury

Tisbury is a large village and civil parish approximately 13 miles (21 km) west of Salisbury in the English county of Wiltshire. With a population at the 2011 census of 2,253, it is a centre for communities around the upper River Nadder and Vale of Wardour. The parish includes the hamlets of Upper Chicksgrove and Wardour.

Tisbury is the largest settlement within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (larger nearby settlements such as Salisbury and Shaftesbury are just outside it).

The area has some paleoanthropological significance. Evidence of early human activity comes from the Middle Gravel at Swanscombe, Kent, a 400,000-year-old stratum, in which skull fragments of a young woman were found. Along with the remains were several fragments of Pseudodiplocoenia oblonga (also known as Isastraea oblonga), one of four Upper Jurassic species of coral unique to the Upper Portlandian of Tisbury. This indicates that the group to which the woman belonged travelled to the Tisbury area, or were part of a trade network linked to the locality. The coral-bearing chert found at Swanscombe has been interpreted as being intentionally carved to represent the profile of a hominid head, making Tisbury the source of materiel used in what is possibly one of the world's oldest pieces of art.

As in much of the Wiltshire Downs, there is also evidence of Bronze Age settlement. The Tisbury Hoard comprising 114 bronze items, discovered in 2011, is from the 9th to 8th century BC. To the southeast of the village lies a large hillfort, now known as Castle Ditches, which was referred to as Willburge in a charter of 984 A.D. Enclosed within ramparts of the fort is a long barrow measuring 60m long, 25m wide and 0.7m high.

A stone circle once stood in one of three adjacent fields, one which was known as Lost Stone Field, near the junction of the Chicksgrove and Chilmark roads. These fields have been joined to form the present Cemetery Field. The last three remaining standing stones, removed in the latter part of the 18th century, now form part of the grotto at Old Wardour.

Wardour Castle is a ruined 14th-century castle at Wardour, on the boundaries of the civil parishes of Tisbury and Donhead St Andrew in the English county of Wiltshire, about 15 miles (24 km) west of Salisbury. The castle was built in the 1390s, came into the ownership of the Arundells in the 16th century and was rendered uninhabitable in 1643 and 1644 during the English Civil War. A Grade I listed building, it is managed by English Heritage and open to the public.



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