Ogbury Camp rises above
the village to the east; a lane to the north of it leads in rather
more than three miles to Amesbury.
In the mist of legend and tradition that surrounds the towns and
hamlets of the Plain the origin of Amesbury is lost. The name is
supposed to be derived from Ambres-burh--the town of Aurelius
Ambrosius--a native British king with a latinized name who reigned
about the year 550. In the _Morte d'Arthur_ "Almesbury" is the
monastery to which Guinevere came for sanctuary, and romantic
tradition asserts that Sir Lancelot took the body of the dead Queen
thence to Glastonbury. We are on firmer ground when we come to the
time of the tenth-century house of Benedictine nuns dispersed by Henry
II for "that they did by their scandalous and irreligious behaviour
bring ill fame to Holy Church." It had been founded by a royal
criminal, that stony-hearted Elfrida of Corfe, who murdered her
stepson while he was a guest at her door. But very soon there was a
new house for women and men--a branch of a noted monastery at
Fontevrault in Anjou--of great splendour and prestige in which the
women took the lead.
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