My submission for item 25: Anything in The Guinness Book of Records. This is the Parish of Amesbury - the oldest continually inhabited area in the UK. Taken on Sunday 23 August 2020, TOAL at 51.173463,-1.794382 with permission obtained from Boscombe Down ATC to fly within their MATZ / aerodrome FRZ. One point claimed
Amesbury is a town in Wiltshire 8 miles north of Salisbury. It claims the record for being the most visited town in the UK due to a semi-derelict structure that lies within the parish boundaries and attracts around 1.5 million visitors each year.
Stonehenge is around 5000 years old but the site that secured Amesbury’s entry in the Guinness Book of Records is a modest clearing by a spring close to the River Avon and the A303 dual-carriageway. Blick Mead, threatened by plans for an A303 tunnel, has been excavated intermittently since 2005 and has been found to be the site of a settlement dating back some 10,000 years.
The woodland that surrounds the site extends to Vespasian’s Camp which predates the Roman Emperor after whom it was later named by some 550 years; it is an Iron Age hill fort.
Amesbury Abbey, on the opposite bank of the River Avon. dates from around 979 and was built on what may have been the site of an earlier monastery. The name Amesbury Abbey is now used by a nearby Grade I listed country house, built in the 1830s, which is currently in use as a luxury nursing home.
A local flying enthusiast, Horatio Barber, began operations in 1909 at nearby Larkhill and the War Office established the first army aerodrome there in 1910. The Royal Artillery currently operates various UAS from the site.
In 1917 an airfield was built south of the town at Boscombe Down and has long been associated with aircraft reasearch and testing as well as being an operational base. The airfield’s evaluation centre is currently home to Rotary Wing Test Squadron (RWTS), Fast Jet Test Squadron (FJTS), Heavy Aircraft Test Squadron (HATS), Handling Squadron, and the Empire Test Pilots’ School (ETPS).
tl;dr
A Wiltshire town has been confirmed as the longest continuous settlement in the United Kingdom. Amesbury, including Stonehenge, has been continually occupied since 8820BC, experts have found. The news was confirmed following an archaeological dig which also unearthed evidence of frogs’ legs being eaten in Britain 8,000 years before France.
Amesbury’s place in history has also now been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records.