Charlton, Donhead St Mary, near Shaftesbury, Wiltshire, England
Incident period: Marks discovered 16 July 1963; official answers on 1 August; continuing debate in 1965–66
A shallow depression, a deep central hole and four radiating marks brought a Wiltshire farm into the flying-saucer headlines in July 1963. No one reported seeing a craft make the marks. What survives instead is a lively documentary case: a farm discovery, an Army bomb check, an ironstone fragment mistaken for something more unusual and competing explanations which continued for years.
The farm discovery
The marks were found on 16 July 1963 at Manor Farm, Charlton, by farmworker Reg Alexander. Farmer Roy Blanchard’s land lay near Shaftesbury, but in Wiltshire. The postal connection with the Dorset town caused some contemporary accounts to place the site in the wrong county. This is Charlton in the Donhead area, not another of England’s many villages with that name.
Waveney Girvan’s substantial account in the September–October 1963 Flying Saucer Review described a depression about eight feet across and four inches deep, with a central hole about three feet deep. Four slots radiated from it. The marks straddled cultivated ground associated with potatoes and barley. They were not the remains of a large excavated impact crater.
A dairyman, Leonard Joliffe, reported hearing a blast on a morning around six o’clock. Girvan acknowledged that a connection between the sound and the marks had not been established. The discovery date is therefore firmer than an exact time at which the feature was formed.
Why the Army came
The possibility of an unexploded bomb brought an Army bomb-disposal unit to the field. Captain John Rogers became one of the named officials associated with the site. A metal detector search and an ironstone specimen helped turn a local puzzle into a national story.
The crucial distinction is between the Army’s task and the interpretations that circulated around it. An official visit did not mean the military had accepted a UFO landing. In a written parliamentary answer on 1 August, War Secretary Joseph Godber said the unit had been concerned with the possible presence of an unexploded bomb. None was found, and the unit left on 26 July.
That answer supplies a contemporary official boundary to the investigation. It neither explains the origin of every mark nor establishes a secret aircraft recovery. It records what the Army was looking for and what it did not find.
The meteorite which did not settle the case
A small stone became a focus of attention. Patrick Moore initially favoured a meteorite explanation. Girvan followed the material’s identification and contacted people involved, including the British Museum. The stone was identified as ordinary ironstone rather than a demonstrated meteorite.
The correction mattered because a confident public explanation had travelled faster than the examination of the specimen. It removed that particular piece of support for an impact explanation. It did not, by itself, identify a different cause for the ground feature.
The episode is a good example of why a case history needs the follow-up as well as the original headline. A recovered object can be real while the first story told about it is wrong. In Charlton, the stone’s existence and the claim that it had arrived from space were separate questions.
Girvan follows the claims
Girvan’s article was strongly argumentative, but it also recorded telephone enquiries and changing information. He checked the identities of people whose comments appeared in the press and challenged the suggestion that the meteorite explanation had ended the mystery.
Another contributor, Robert Randall, advanced an extraordinary spacecraft interpretation. Girvan questioned the scientific status attributed to him in newspaper coverage. His article therefore did not simply endorse everyone who offered a saucer explanation. The source preserves a dispute over expertise as well as a dispute over the physical marks.
Neither an impressive title in a newspaper nor an official-looking visitor can replace the underlying observations. What was established at the farm was a set of ground features. The cause remained a matter of competing interpretations.
Nearby sightings were not a witnessed landing
The wider discussion brought in reports of unusual objects from the region, including an orange object associated with PC Anthony Penny and a separate account from Frank Selwood at Parkstone. These reports had different dates and locations. They were not observations of the Charlton marks being made.
Their inclusion illustrates how a physical mystery can gather a wider UFO context. A striking story in one field encourages researchers to look for other unusual reports nearby. That can reveal useful leads, but geographical proximity does not demonstrate that the same object or event connects them.
For this reason, the case is listed in the UFO collection as a historical alleged landing-trace controversy. The article does not turn it into an eyewitness account of a saucer descending into Manor Farm.
The later lightning explanation
The argument continued after 1963. Alan W. Sharp proposed that lightning had struck near the position of an old iron straining post on a former field boundary, with strong wind helping to disperse disturbed vegetation. The proposal appeared in a 1965 BUFORA publication and was discussed again by Charles Bowen in Flying Saucer Review in 1966.
Bowen’s “Back to Charlton” resisted Sharp’s explanation. He and consultant C. Maxwell Cade questioned whether it adequately accounted for the crop disturbance. Bowen also compared the layout with descriptions from another landing claim abroad, using that resemblance to keep a mechanical interpretation in play.
Those were competing arguments, not a newly observed landing. The comparison introduced a possible analogy; the lightning proposal introduced a natural mechanism. Neither should be reported as a fresh physical examination which conclusively dated and explained every part of the feature.
What remains useful today
Charlton is unusually well suited to a source-led history because several kinds of record can be read together. The specialist account describes the marks and its author’s enquiries. Hansard records the Army’s limited purpose. The 1966 discussion shows how the argument developed after the newspaper excitement had passed.
The story also demonstrates how easily uncertainty can be replaced by a slogan. “Meteorite”, “bomb” and “saucer” each circulated as a possible answer. The published corrections and the official statement prevent those labels from becoming equivalent findings.
The UKPX pin marks Charlton village in the Donhead St Mary area. It does not locate the exact private field or imply that the 1963 feature survives for visitors. The case’s strongest surviving evidence is documentary: named people, a photographed ground feature in the original publication, a specimen correction and the clearly stated limits of the official enquiry.
Timeline
16 July 1963: Reg Alexander discovers marks at Manor Farm, Charlton.
July 1963: the Army investigates a possible unexploded bomb; a stone attracts meteorite speculation.
26 July 1963: the bomb-disposal unit leaves, according to the later official answer.
1 August 1963: Godber explains the Army’s role in Parliament.
1965–66: Sharp’s lightning proposal and Bowen’s response continue the debate.
Sources & further reading
Waveney Girvan, The Wiltshire Crater Mystery, FSR 9(5), printed pages 3–8 — Contemporary investigation, site description, specimen identification and press dispute.
Hansard, 1 August 1963: Crater, Charlton (Investigation) — Contemporary Army explanation of its bomb-disposal task.
Charles Bowen, Back to Charlton, FSR 12(3), printed page 12 — Response to Sharp’s later lightning explanation.
Charlton, Donhead St Mary map — The correct Wiltshire village, near Shaftesbury.
Related case files
The Warminster Thing: Christmas noises, the 1965 skywatch wave and the hilltop years
Berwyn Mountains, 1974: the tremor, the lights and the mountainside sighting
Location note: Charlton village-area reference; not an exact private field or surviving crater position.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.