Herds of deer roam the open glades, and wild life is abundant and varied.  In some parts of the Forest the thickets and dense undergrowth are reminiscent of the district between the Rufus Stone and Fording-bridge in the greater Forest, but the highest beauty of Savernake lies in the avenues of oak and beech which extend for miles and meet about midway between Durley and Marlborough.  Here are no fir plantations to strike an alien note.  Rugged and ancient trees that were saplings in Stuart times or before and the dense young growth of to-day are all natural to the soil.  The column that stands on high ground, a little over a mile from Savernake station, commemorates, among other events, the temporary recovery of George III from his mental illness.

Great Bedwyn was once a Parliamentary borough and, in more remote times still, a town of importance.  It has a station on the Reading-Taunton Railway and can be reached by circuitous roads from Savernake Forest.  Although nominally still a market town, it is really but a large village.  It is mentioned in the Saxon records as the scene of a battle between the men of Wessex and those of Mercia in the great struggle for domination in 675.  The cruciform church is a fine structure, mostly built of flint and dating from Transitional times.  The chancel is Early English and the transepts Decorated, but the nave is of the older style with fine ornamentation.  In the chancel will be noticed the effigy of Sir John Seymour (1536), the father of Protector Somerset.  A brass commemorates another John Seymour, brother of the Protector.  There is also a monument to a daughter of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.  In the south transept is an effigy, cross legged, of Sir Adam de Stokke (1312) and a plain slab with an incised cross of another of his family.  The church has a quantity of stained glass of much beauty.  An ancient Market Hall once stood in the centre of the spacious main street; while it stood the villagers were reminded of the vanished glories of Bedwyn.  The road proceeds past Chisbury Hill, a prehistoric camp on the Wansdyke.  Within the earthwork is a barn that was once the Decorated church of St. Martin.  Mr. A.H.  Allcroft thinks that the original building was erected shortly after the drawn battle between Wessex and Mercia that took place on the Downs hereabouts in 675.  Froxfield is reached just short of the Berkshire border and the way accompanies the railway and canal through Little Bedwyn, where is a stone-spired church dating from the early thirteenth century.  Froxfield Church is outside the village on a hill.  It is a small and ancient Norman building, quaint and picturesque.  The old Somerset Hospital here was founded in 1686 by Sarah Duchess of Somerset for thirty widows of the clergy and others; about half that number are now maintained in the beautiful old buildings, grouped round a quadrangle high above the road.