Wiltshire - the new Jerusalem?
The third and final instalment of my walk into England's past
The housing was building up thick and fast now, a sign that the finishing line was in sight1. I was on the edge of the village now and the train back to London would be pulling into the station an hour from now.
The first thing that struck me about Pewsey was that it now had a by-pass. This does not augur well, I thought as I climbed the steps up from the towpath of the Kennet and Avon Canal. I wasn’t expecting the village to be totally preserved in aspic these last 30 years just for my benefit. But I hoped the place would be recognisable at least.
The cottage where I lived for two years was still there, set at right angles to the Wilcot Road. Our local was still open just a few paces from the front door.
The Crown was the site of one of the weirdest experiences of my life.
Going back to my arrival back in 1990, I had signed the lease for the house and picked up the keys at the estate agents. I was a one man advance party for the family that evening. The cupboards were bare so I walked across to the Crown to see if I could get something to eat there.
My entrance was of the ‘metropolitan-type-walks-into-rural pub-and-locals-fall-silent’ variety. We’ve seen it The Wicker Man and An American Werewolf in London and countless other horror films.
It was a stroke of luck that there was football on the TV there that night. Not just any old football match but the England v Germany semi-final from the 1990 World Cup. I asked a question that showed a modicum of bloke-ish knowledge and I got a grunt of recognition. I interpreted that as a positive sign. I need not turn on my heels and go straight back out hungry. I took a seat.
With 10 minutes of normal time left, Gary Lineker equalised for England and the Crown was a-whooping and a-hollering. That was that as far as the pub was concerned. Collectively we were going to hire a mini-bus the next day to drive to Italy for the final five days later. And I had offered myself up as the designated driver.
Alas, history didn’t serve up a happy ending.
The game went to extra time and a penalty shootout that was inevitably won by Germany. But not before the infamous ‘Gazza’s tears’ moment where Paul Gascoigne got booked. So he would miss the final even if England got there.
Alas, it turned out that we would not be going to Italy. But I had earned a modicum of acceptance from the villagers.
That Friday afternoon in 2025 when I made my return to Pewsey, not only was the Crown busy but all the others I remembered were too; the Royal Oak, the Coopers Arms, the Alfred’s and the Moonrakers. Not bad for a village of less than 4,000 souls.
By far the most notorious of those when I lived there was that last pub in the list.
‘Moonrakers’ is a local name for Wiltshire folk. It comes from a story about smugglers pretending to be catching the moon’s reflections in a pond, using a rake when the customs and excise men came looking for their contraband.
When I lived there as a young family we avoided that particular pub as it had a general air of disorder. Back then we heard stories of a character who had got repeatedly banned from the Moonrakers. And indeed from every pub in the village.
Unbeknownst to me at the same time as us there was another outsider living in Pewsey, a writer by the name of Jez Butterworth. He met that outcast and ten years later who wrote a play called ‘Jerusalem’. It had multiple award-winning runs in the West End and on Broadway. To this day it is the finest experience I have ever had in a theatre any time, any place.
The play’s hero was called Johnny “Rooster” Byron. He was played by Mark Rylance and he was based in large part on that outcast from Pewsey.
The Wiltshire village of Pewsey becomes the fictional ‘Flintock’, its famous real-life carnival transposed from September to St Georges Day for the play’s setting.
When I saw the play in the West End, I was brought up short when the road I lived was name-checked in Act One, possibly even my home too. Rooster reports that a local “says I been burgling flats up the Wilcot Road”.
For Rooster, living as a hard-living, modern-day gypsy in a decrepit Airstream caravan in the woods behind Pewsey/Flintlock, England’s past is all around him. Just as I bumped into ghosts of England’s ancient past during that hike in 2025, Rooster talks about meeting the giant that built Stonehenge “just off the A14 outside Upavon. About half a mile from the Little Chef”.
The old myths still linger in the prehistoric barrows that circle the village as Rooster declaims to his merry band of followers: “Come, you drunken spirits. Come, you battalions. You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!”.
The Moonrakers was bedecked in a Cross of St George that day when I returned, perhaps in honour of the play and the former patron they had tried to ban all those years ago2.
Back in the early 90s when I lived in the village, the main way for me to unwind from corporate life was to snatch a run on the Wiltshire Downs with the local running club. As I headed back to the station to catch the train back to London 30 years later, I wondered whether any of the people I ran with were still about.
I decided to sneak a short cut marked on my map, down an unmarked alley. I thought I would save myself time but I was pulled up short by a man of a similar age to me. He told me there was no right of way. My hackles raised, I replied that there were no signs to say it was a no through way3 . That was when things took a turn for the uncanny. As had the whole day.
This chap I was in mid discussion with, had bought this thin strip of land for the community. He had re-seeded it with grass and so didn’t want it to get trampled on.
There was a van parked behind him marked ‘Woodland Services’. To defuse matters, I changed the subject and asked him: ‘Do you know Mark Anderson?’. Mark was one of the stalwarts of the running club. He was a tree surgeon so I thought that might just have been his van parked there.
Yes, came back the reply. In fact he and Mark had founded Pewsey Vale Running Club in the late 80s just before I arrived in the village. What’s more, when I told him my name, he remembered me and I remembered him. His name was Mark and my name was Mark. And there was a missing Mark Anderson. Thrice Mark. And Johnny Rooster is played by Mark Rylance and his six year old son in the play is called Mark too.
We caught up on our respective news but I had to cut things short as I could see my train back to London was pulling into the station imminently.
On the journey back I reflected further on my day.
In the intervening three decades I had moved about all over the place, one of Theresa May’s subsequently named, “Citizens of Nowhere”. Haughtily, I used to describe myself as a citizen of London first, Europe second and England last.
No-one I met that day had left the village. I imagine they felt like the character Davey Dean in ‘Jerusalem’:
“I’ve never seen the point of other countries. I leave Wiltshire, my ears pop. Seriously.
I’m on my bike, pedalling along, see a sign says ‘Welcome to Berkshire’, I turn straight round.
I don’t like to go east of Wootton Bassett. Suddenly it’s Reading, then London, then before you know where you are you’re in France, and then there’s countries popping up all over. What’s that about?”
Everyone assumed I was back in Pewsey because I was coming back. Why wouldn’t they?
But how would life have turned out if my two years in the English countryside had turned out to be the rest of my life?
When I lived there in my late 20s, I didn’t feel English in the way Johnny Rooster did. Nor no doubt as the Marks did.
I was a tourist from London who stayed a couple of years then moved on. I flew to the four corners of the globe for work then at the weekends it was like we were running a B&B for weekend breaks for friends and family.
It’s only now, post Brexit, half a lifetime later, that I truly feel my roots in the land I call home.
It turned out that the early 90s were a significant if not magical time to have lived in a small village in Wiltshire. But it took me three decades and a good long walk to worth that all out.
He was right. It was not marked on the OS map as a right of way.