Professor Colin Pillinger, known for his work on the Beagle 2 Mars spacecraft, had been studying a smaller meteorite from the Danebury Hill Fort in Hampshire and felt that there could be a connection between the two.

[7] Thousands of years later, in the Stone or Bronze Age, it is thought that the meteorite was built into a burial mound close to Lake House.

The meteorite may have been unearthed in the 19th century by Edward Duke, a previous owner of Lake House who was an antiquarian who excavated burial mounds nearby and had his own private museum.

Photographic evidence shows it on the doorstep of Lake House at the time the property was owned by the brewer Joseph Lovibond, Mayor of Salisbury in 1878–79 and 1890–91.

It was found near Wardour by a metal detectorist, and consists of tools such as axe heads, chisels, sickles and gouges, as well as spearheads, daggers, knives, swords and scabbard fittings.

[9] In June 2012, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) awarded Salisbury Museum a grant of £1,794,600 towards the development of a new Archaeology of Wessex gallery.

[10] A £350,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund was awarded in August 2013, to help save the personal archive of Rex Whistler.