FIREFIGHTERS are battling a large blaze which has spread across several acres of Wiltshire countryside.

Crews are at the scene on Pewsey Hill, where around 20 acres on three fields are burning.

Swindon firefighters have been joined by crews from Pewsey, Marlborough, Devizes, and Andover.

The emergency responders were called at 12.11pm today and are using five hose reel jets and one main jet to control the fire.

Large plumes of billowing smoke can be seen for miles around.

This is not the first fire to break out on the Salisbury Plain this summer.

Many days without rainfall made the county's countryside dry and provided the sort of conditions in which fires spread faster.

Firefighters spent days battling a large blaze on Ministry of Defence land south of Urchfont during a military training exercise in July. Helicopters were called in to dump water onto the woodland as temperatures soared above 30 degrees Celsius.

People living nearby had to keep their windows closed and reported seeing a 'fog-like' plume of smoke filling the skies.

And a week earlier, 35 hectares of ground went up in smoke on another part of the Salisbury Plain.