One of the most remarkable stretches of “road” in England is what used to be the Shaftesbury turnpike running from the top of Harnham Hill (the old Blandford Road) past the South Wilts Golf Club and Salisbury Racecourse, and continuing until it joins the A30 to Shaftesbury 14 miles further on.

This is the opinion of C Cochrane in his paperback, “The Lost Roads of Wessex” (published in 1969) and it was my good fortune to buy this book recently - an excellent addition to my collection of local history books.

The road has, in fact, no particular name, but Mr Cochrane calls it the “Racecourse Way” and says it must have been known to people in the long peaceful centuries of Roman Britain.

In the 1400s, it might have been expected that the Shaftesbury road would have settled down to a comfortable route along the valley by Compton Chamberlayne, and would have got away from the breezy ridgeway, but not a bit of it.

Even by the mid-1700s, the main road was still the Racecourse Way. Ancient maps show a “mile tree” on leaving Salisbury, followed by two and three mile trees past the Racecourse and so on to an eight mile tree just before Chiselbury Camp.

These trees were planted by the Earl of Pembroke who revived the Roman method of placing a numbered stone at every mile and the living index of a tree to make it more observable.

Reading this book I found a feature that is possibly unique. Within a few square miles, says Mr Cochrane, Salisbury can provide no fewer than four one-time capitals – Old Sarum, Wilton, Salisbury itself, and Clarendon.

He writes: “Nobody seems to have left a record that from the neighbouring high ground could be seen the towers or pinnacles of all four – surely as rare a sight as was to be found in Europe.”