John Piper, C.H. (1903-1992)

Richard Ingrams records (Piper's Places, London, 1983, p. 123) that Piper's interest in Wiltshire 'went back to his boyhood when he had joined the Wiltshire Archaeological Society and experienced for the first time the strange atmosphere of the downland, at once wild and homely, and the pull of the prehistoric sites which had been felt by so many painters and early antiquaries like John Aubrey - the 'tree-crowned barrows', the sarsen stones, and Silbury Hill - 'dark and wonderfully shaped, like an inverted hand-turned wooden bowl'. Driving from Marlborough to Calne with Jim Richards in 1940 he noted 'that apart from a shack or so and the distant RAF depot, nothing has spoilt this area. It is still possible to see it as Gilpin saw it in 1798'.