Not
far from the village is Castle Rings, an encampment from which there
is a grand view of the Wilts and Somerset borderland. In one of the
chalky combes just below the hill is an old Quaker burial ground, as
remote and lonely as the more famous Jordans ground was before the
American visitor began to make that a place of pilgrimage. Donhead St.
Andrew, a mile from St. Mary's, is in an entirely different situation
to the latter, the Perpendicular church being at the bottom of a deep
hollow. Both villages are very charming.
The main route continues amid surroundings of much beauty, with the
well-named White Sheet Hill to the right and the wooded and hummocky
outline of Ansty Hill to the left, until the turning for the latter
makes a good excuse for leaving the high road once more. Ansty
village, seven miles from Shaftesbury, is unremarkable in itself, but
has close by it one of the most picturesque and historic ruins in
Wiltshire. The demolition of Wardour Castle came about in this wise.
At the outbreak of the Civil War the owner, Sir Thomas Arundell, was
away from home with the army around the King.
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