By J.U. Powell, M.A. 1904.
History is not altogether an affair of printed books, dead annals, and the study chair. The first impressions of it may be given by out-door observation, by the features of a country, by its buildings, its local names, its language, its customs and traditions, now fast disappearing. Nor is it an affair of the great cities with their colourless suburbs, for they are often mushroom growths. The stream of natural history has left more and clearer traces in the country districts. Here the marks left by past events are plain; and one who trains his eye can read the history of a country in its face, just as plainly as in its men, its language, and its customs and character.
Many of the notable periods of English history can be illustrated from the upper part of this valley, and it is worth while to gather the scattered results of enquiries into the history of this part of England, and, although there is nothing of startling moment, to show how much may be seen that is really interesting and full of meaning. (1)
The south-west of England, as is well known, has even more traces remaining of ancient life than the north, which was settled later and more sparsely; whether we take the early British times, the Romano-British, or the Early English time to the Norman Conquest. The most useful account of these times will be found in the first volume of a work generally accessible, “Social England,” which summarises the results of the scientific researches of the anthropologist, General Pitt-Rivers, and the painstaking labours of the diligent student of public records, Sir R.C. Hoare.
I. – BRITISH AND ROMANO-BRITISH TIMES
To take a range slightly beyond this valley, it is evident to anyone who stands on the ridge of hills that run from Maiden Bradley to Wylye, that it was the home of a large population from very ancient times. These downs on the south of the valley were eve more thickly populated than those on the northern side, partly because they are more inaccessible, and partly because there was better hunting-ground near This populous character is shown not only by the so-called “camps,” or “castles,” which abound, but also by the settlements, and by the round barrows, which are to be found in the valleys as well as on the hills – for example, in the meadows of Bishopstrow, Norton, Sutton, Sherrington, the hill settlements at Knook and Stockton, and the settlements in the hill and valley at Hill Deverill. And not far off are the lake-dwellings at Glastonbury. The language of this people has left its traces in the names of hill and river; Brimsdon, for Brynsdon (bryn = a height); Pen, also “height,” not far off; Dead Maiden, near, with which may be compared Dead Man, in Cornwall, a corruption of the Celtic dod maen, and Dod post, near Longleat; while “Maiden” can also be seen in Maiden Bradley, and Maiden Castle, in Dorset; and at Maedenbeorgh, which appears to have been the old name of Maddington, and in the name of Maedenbeorgh at Sherrington (Hoare, Heytesbury Hundred, p.235), just as in many other places in England and Scotland. The word probably means “hill with a round top,” and has been discussed, but not settled, in the Antiquary for June, August, September, and October 1902, and March, 1903. Deverel (2) is certainly from the common root “dev” = water, of which a good example is Deveron, in Aberdeenshire, and the Dives, in Normandy. The names of rivers never change, and those of hills hardly ever. (3) The inhabitants were largely Belgic. They had advanced over the district in successive waves, and 200 B.C. will be a round date for the second Belgic conquest, in which they took South Wilts, and Dr. Guest (3) has traced their boundary dykes, one running near Tilshead. The camps, too, are of this early time, or even of an earlier; not Roman. We must not picture the Roman soldier pacing these ramparts, and as he gazes over the featureless downs, thinking wistfully of the terraced hills of Italy with the vineyards climbing “acclive solum collesque supinos,” as may be seen on the Rhine or the Lake of Geneva at the present day. But down in the valley the Roman farmer in the second century A.D., will have driven his ewes across the Norton ford, and penned his lambs under the sunny slopes, just as his successor does today, and taken the honey that his bees gathered from the wild thyme on the hills. For in the meadows near the water between Bishopstrow and Norton, are traces of two Roman villas. From the fact that it was Somerset and Dorset, not Wilts, that were thick with Roman settlements, it is probable that the Roman advance came from that side, not from the Salisbury side. For there are eighty places in Dorset where there are traces of Roman occupation, and Mr. Moule (4) thinks that search would reveal at least a hundred. The site of one of the two can just be traced, and bits of building stone, and tiles with incised lines worn smooth by use may be found. But after their first discovery in 1786 the place was ransacked more than once by “the virtuosu of the neighbourhood,” as the writer in Vetusta Monumenta, ii., 43 says. The site of the second building is probably in the fir plantation at the west end of Pitmead. The banks round it contain a few pieces of rough black pottery and tile, and there is a well-defined rise or heap in the plantation, measuring about thirty paces by ten, under which is probably the debris. (5) Here and there in the watercourses of the meadows lie bits of tile, brick, and building stone. Probably some evening when the harvest was in and the oxen were ploughing the English fell upon them and slew the servants with the edge of the sword. Some perished in the defence, and as the smoke went up from the homestead, the survivors fled to make a last and fruitless stand on the brow of Battlesbury, a name which may preserve the memory of the invasion.
II. – EARLY ENGLISH TIMES
The coming of the English can still be read plainly in the place-names. Dr. Guest has with great probability traced out the line of their advance. He argues that after the battle of the Mons Badonicus in 520 A.D. (probably Badbury, in Dorset), the Upper Wylye Valley was still British, not yet English, and that it did not become English till the capture of Bath in 577, the name “Mere” pointing to the boundary between the two peoples. We shall probably be right in dating the English advance shortly after the fall of Old Sarum in 552; some may have advanced north-west as far as the “Divisae” (“border”) Devizes, (6) some south-west to “Mere.” We are concerned here with the western line of advance. When the fall of Old Sarum left the country open to them, they advanced probably along the ridge leading west, by the well-marked track thrugh Groveley Wood, and thence they would descend off the spurs into the Wylye Valley. The advance was along the southern rather than the northern height above the river, because most of the settlements are on the south bank of the stream. In fact, they were passing through a settled and cultivated district, as can still be seen on the spurs of the hills by Stockton onwards; and it is likely that they would follow the traces of the former occupants, and come down into the valley at various points. Of the eleven places whose name end in -ton, between Bapton and Norton, seven stand on the south bank of the stream; two only stand entirely on the north, Fisherton and Ashton; and of the two remaining, Upton (originally Ubban-ton) stretches to the southern slopes of the valley, while Norton joins Sutton, one settlement practically, the North-ton and the South-ton. It would be expected that at Norton the invaders would occupy the ground of the Roman settlers, and this appears to be likely. For the rising ground to the south, at the eastern end of Pitmead, the only high ground near, bears in the tithe map the name of Mote, or Moot Hill, while the mill that stood near was called Mount Mill. This is probably a corruption of Mote, for “mount” is found as an alternative to “mote” in Scotland. (7) So it is likely that the original settlement at Norton was on the south side of the river, but there are no traces now of any ditch or rampart. Mote Hill certainly has traces of a mound at the top; it may very likely have been a burial mound, but owing to the brushwood it is hard to make out. At all events, we may be sure of seeing before us traces of three settlements on the same land: – the early inhabitants, whose burial mounds remain in the meadow, the Roman, and the English. The advance was probably not along the valley, for the way would be more difficult. Similarly, the invasion of the upper Deverill valley would take place from the ring of hills between Brixton and Mere Down.
Here all the -ton names have not the same value as evidence, because Kings-ton and Monk-ton are plainly later, and point to later owners. But Brictric had his ton at Brixton, (8) and Ubba at Upington, in Longbridge, just as one Ubba left his name at Upton Lovel, mentioned above. We may dwell for a moment on this Longbridge name. It has entirely disappeared from maps, and is used only by some of the older generation of inhabitants. It lies at the bottom of the northern slope of Lord’s Hill, near springs, and may be regarded as the earliest part of the Longbridge settlement. Indeed the central part of the village must at that time have been a large marsh, and the ancient British habitations are all along the bottom of the slope. The pronunciation of the name is Ubban-ton (the genitive of Ubba) Ubba’s ton, occurs at Upton Lovel, anciently Ubbantun ,(8) and many examples of this syllable -ing are later corruptions of -an, as Dr. Guest has shown; (9) for example, Abingdon is Aebban-dun, that is, Abba’s-dun. At the end of the high ground the invaders paused, and the woodland below them, Selwood, was their boundary, their “Mere.” Their names are numerous, and to those given above may be added Hegtred at Heytesbury, i.e., Hegtred’s-bury.
We get a glimpse of their old worship in names of places near, though not actually in the valley itself: the name of the god Woden is seen in Wanstrow; Scratchury is the hill of a Norse demon Skratti, whose name appears also in Derbyshire; the deified hero Waermund is seen in the name Waermunds-tre, which is mentioned in a charter as a boundary-mark at Tisbury. Perhaps he appears also in the name Warminster, which may be Waermunds-tre (as I have tried to show in the Wiltshire Archaeological And Natural History Magazine, vol.xxix. p.191), and in Werescombe, or Warscombe, which occurs in a thirteenth century document relative to Longbridge Deverill, which will be considered later. And the Teutonic legend of Woden with his spectral hunt seems to be localised at Gun’s Church, a barrow on the down above Longbridge, round which the old owner of the land drives his hounds in the chase, with horses and horns.
From these early days, too, came the custom of going out into the fields in spring-time to “tread the wheat.” Palm-Sunday was the day at Longbridge, and men and lads kept it as a festival, going up the down to play “trap.” (10) This piece of innocent and unconscious nature-worship, in honour of the Spirit of the Corn, held its own here till the middle of the nineteenth century, in the same way as the belief in the appearance and the laying of ghosts. Some pre-Christian beliefs have never died out, and, even now, sometimes astonish us by their re-appearance among modern pagans; but there often imposture is at work, not unconscious tradition, as here.
Many more traces of these early English settlers may be found in the field-names seen in the tithe-maps and heard in local conversation: such as the “pill” (landing place) at Norton; “Prior’s pill,” by Pitmead; “Pill ford,” in a survey of Monkton, like “the quay,” sometimes still so-called, at Hill Deverill; the “cop,” or “head,” of Copheap; the “Chettle” hole at Corton, which is the same word as “kettle,” called so from its shape (and not a corruption of “chapel,” “because there was one there once which was swallowed by by diabolical agency” (11) ); Mote Hill, or Moot Hill, at Norton. In this name may be preserved for us the meeting-place of the new settlers – the “tun-moot, where the inhabitants met as a self-governing community.” (12)
A new religion was not long in finding this people with their capacity for colonising and citizenship. Their old Teutonic religion had but a weak hold on them, and yielded easily to the Christian missionaries. Berin, whose name has been latinised into Birinus, the Apostle of the West Saxons, began his preaching in 634, about the time at which the Abbey of Malmesbury was founded, while Glastonbury was already a Christian foundation before the heathen English came, and was “the one great Church of the Briton which lived through the storm of English conquest, and passed unhurt into the hands of the Englishmen,” (13) to be revived.
The first traces that we still have are those of Aldhelm. Educated at Malmesbury, he held the see of Sherborne from 705 to 709. He was a missionary bishop, and there is every reason to believe that the name Bishopstrow refers to him. This name most probably points to the fact that he preached standing under some well-known tree, which afterwards became associated with him, just as Augustine was said to have preached under a Gospel oak in Hempage Wood, near Winchester (Kitchen’s Winchester, p.57). Such neighbouring names as Wans-strow, Hallatrow, Waermund’s-treow (Birch, Chart. Saxon., 756) point to this simple derivation.
But there is a typically mediaeval story told by William of Amesbury (Gest. Pont. 384). It is that Aldhelm happened to fix his “ashen staff” in the ground as he began to preach, and that during his discourse it put forth buds and leaves. He left it in the place as an offering to God, and many ash-trees sprang forth from it and hence the place was called “ad Episcopi arbores,” “Bishop’s-trees.” “This story,” says the writer, “I do not maintain as absolutely true.” (14) These details of “ash-staff” and “ash-trees” are worth noticing, because ash-trees are still to be found in the parish, and near the church; the name, too, of Five Ash Lane is found in the adjoining parish. If we adopt this derivation, we must look for their position near the church; for the population would be near the water, the meadows, and the mill, and in the direction of the cultivated land near the Roman villas. There a missionary would find his audience. In the same way, Brigit founded a church at Kildare beside an ancient oak-tree, which gives its name to the church; Kil-dare means “church of the oak.” (Hyde Literary History of Ireland, 158.) But another derivation has great plausibility. “Treow” means not only “tree,” but also “cross”; and Canon Jones (History of Diocese of Sarum, p.44) suggests that “more than a fragment of truth” underlies this story, and that “perhaps Aldhelm held the cross up before the people, or fixed it in the ground.” In the same way, Kentigern “set up the cross” at Crosthwaite, in Cumberland, in 553, and preached there (Rawnsley, English Lakes, I., 7, 76:-)
“They listened in their multitudes
To one that ‘midst them stood
And reared the Cross; as painters draw
John Baptist in the wood.”
(A.C. Coxe, Christian Ballads.)
With this we may compare Stubbs (I., 225), “There were as yet very few Churches; crosses were set up in the village and on the estates of Christian nobles, at the foot of which the missionaries preached”; and Earle (Land Charters, p.471), “Crosses . . . . above all were erected where as yet there was no church-house; then they were surrounded by a lic-tun (grave-yard), and a ring of yew-trees.” This derivation is very attractive and almost convincing. A third suggestion as to the name must be mentioned, as it has the authority of the Bishop of Bristol (Wilts Archaeological Magazine, vol.xxxi. p.280). (15) He suggests that the name may mark the site of one of the stone crosses which William of Malmesbury tells us were set up by the order of Bishop Egwine of Worcester, wherever the body of Aldhelm rested while it was being brought from Doulting, near Frome, where he died, to Malmesbury, where he was buried. These crosses, William says, were called “Bishop’s-stones.” This view does not seem likely, on the whole, chiefly because Bishop Egwine’s words, given by William of Malmesbury, “quinquaginta ferme milibus ultra Maldunense monasterium deveni,” seem to mean simply that Doulting is about fifty miles from Malmesbury, as he found on his journey; and do not imply that the funeral procession reached Malmesbury after a round to Bishopstrow. Apart from the intrinsic unlikeliness of this, the mileage would be too great, for Egwine is probably reckoning by the Roman mile, fourteen of which are generally reckoned to thirteen English miles; and as Doulting is a good forty English miles from Malmesbury, the expression “about fifty” is not a bad reckoning. Again, William of Malmesbury says that these crosses were called “Bishop’s-stanes,” so that if the place was named after this incident, the name would have probably been, not Bishopstrow, but Bishopstone.
We may, then, dismiss this last view, and return to the connection of Aldhelm and Bishopstrow, and see if there is more than the name only. It has been observed by Dr. Baron that two churches which are traditionally associated with Aldhelm are of a peculiar build. At Bishopstrow, there was an apsidal chancel with no east window, but the eastern part of the apse was an unbroken space of wall with a window on each side; and at Bradford there was a small doorway in the east wall of the nave instead of a chancel arch. (16) Dr. Baron finds in these peculiarities a trace of the Greek ecclesiastical tradition due to Aldhelm’s training under Adrian, a follower of Theodore of Tarsus, for Theodore was a learned Greek who founded a school in Canterbury for the study of Greek, and thereby created a certain sympathy with the Greek Church.
During this time, monasteries such as Shaftesbury, and Glastonbury under Dunstan, were the centres of religion and learning. The great abbey of Glastonbury, founded probably on a spot of ancient sanctity, was growing, and, although we have no local details, it is not likely that it would have neglected to evangelise the upper part of the valley, a district in which its estates were so large, and which was near at hand. For by this time the district was as settled as it is now with manors and homesteads. Indeed, as early as about 930 we find the abbey of Glastonbury in possession of Monkton, which was named from its owners, and Longbridge. It is true that the only church in the Deverill valley definitely mentioned in Domesday Book is that of Brixton, although a priest is mentioned as holding some land in Hill or Longbridge; but it must be remembered that no return was made of churches unless they held glebe lands. Itinerant priests on their journeys would gather listeners in the villages before churches were built, and it was not till a later century that the fresh spirit infused by the energetic Normans built and endowed churches. There are traces of a Saxon Church at Mere (Wilts Archaeological Magazine, No.86, p.22), and, as we have seen, almost certainly a Saxon Church at Bishopstrow; there are remains of a Saxon cross of the tenth century at Codford St. Peter; (17) and at Knook Church probably a portion of a Saxon cross (Wilts Archaeological Magazine, No.79, p.46); there are remains of Early Norman work at Sutton (St. Leonard’s) and Codford St. Mary; a Norman font at Codford St. Peter; Norman work at Stockton, Shaftesbury (granted in 1115 to Salisbury Cathedral), Long bridge (1130-1150), and a portion of a Norman font at Norton.
There were churches in the 12th century at Hill Deverill, Horningsham, Boyton, Tytherington, Upton, Knook, and a chapel of Mere, which has now disappeared, dedicated to St. Andrew, at Kingston Deverill. And at some time between 1198 and 1211 the Abbot of Bec conveyed to the Church of Sarum the rights which they had in the church of Brixton, and Heytesbury was a Collegiate Church in 1165. Here it will be well to give the evidence which architecture affords in the case of the following Churches. (18) Codford St. Mary has work of about 1180; Upton has work of the end of 12th or beginning of the 13th; Boyton of the middle of the 13th; Stockton of the 13th; Sutton (St. Leonard’s) was re-built in the 13th; Codford St. Peter and Brixton have 13th century work, but there are traces of older work in both; Norton has work of the early or middle of the 14th century; Kingston, of the 14th; Bishopstrow, as now existing, of the middle of the 15th, and this, as we saw, may have been an old foundation then.
There are two churches of which the foundation presents some points of interest, Hill Deverill and Longbridge. Hill was the subject of dispute soon after its foundation. The Osmund Register (I. 349-351) gives a deed of Elyas Giffard, of which the date is 1130-1135, in which he certifies to the Bishop of Sarum his gift of the Church of Hill to Heytesbury, founded “in feudo Walteri militis mei, eodem Waltero concedente.” We get further details in a document of the date 1156 to 1160. The two disputants were the aforesaid Walter and Canon Roger, founder of the Prebendal Church at Heytesbury. The ordinary chairman would have been Azo, the Archdeacon of Sarum, Roger’s brother; but Walter “suspected” Azo, and the Bishop therefore, to satisfy all parties appointed Adelelm, the Archdeacon of Dorset, to act. The case was argued in St. Peter’s Church, at Glaston Deverill (Longbridge), before a rural chapter of the deanery. Canon Roger argued that the Church belonged to his prebend, while Walter argued that it had never so belonged. The judgement was in favour of Roger, and Elyas Giffard therefore drew up his deed forbidding the aforesaid Walter or his heirs from raising any vexatious controversy against Heytesbury Church in the matter. So the church formed a prebend in the Collegiate church of Heytesbury till the Act of 1839 abolished the prebends there. (19)
The notice in this document is valuable, because it confirms Mr. Ponting’s date of the earliest architecture in Longbridge Church as being 1130-1150, and because there is an oral tradition, still repeated in the village, that the church was consecrated, and therefore presumably dedicated, by Thomas Becket. Now at first sight this seems unlikely, because Becket was not Archbishop till 1162, thirty years after the date of this document which speaks of St. Peter’s church there. But it was not uncommon for a church to be named long before it was consecrated. Thus at Horning sham (Reg. Osmund., i., 313) the Church in 1224 is called “de beato Johanne Baptista non dedicata”; yet Horningsham chapel had been founded before 1156; and at Knook in 1226 was a chapel “in honore beatae Mariae Magdalenae, non dedicata.” Oral tradition, therefore, here fills up a gap in the documents. There are some other features of interest in these traditions. They are as follows:- that Thomas Becket consecrated Longbridge Church; and that he visited Crockerton “Revel,” coming through Southleigh Wood, “dressed like a gentleman, and going back dressed like a beggar, because he had spent all his money at the Revel.” The Rev. W.H. Hutton, in a note to his Bampton Lectures for this year, has suggested to me that this story is a reminiscence of the story told of Becket and the King (see Stephen’s Materials for the Life of Becket, vol.3, 24 (Rolls Series):- “One day when he was riding in London with the King, they met a poor old man. “Do you see,’ said the King, “this poor ill-clad man? It would be charity to give him a thick warm cape.’ The King pulled Becket’s red cloak off, and Becket struggled to keep it, but let the King have it for the old fellow, who went off rejoicing, while the followers offered Becket their cloaks.” The first thing to notice is that this “Revel” is a “changed feast.” Not only had the popularity of Becket in many cases caused the re-dedication of Churches to him, but after the translation of his remains on July 7th, 1220, to a shrine in Canterbury Cathedral, that day became the popular festival in his honour. There is an exact parallel to the case of Longbridge in that of Wymondham, in Norfolk, where the old day of the parish fair was altered from St. Alban’s day to the morrow of the translation of the remains of Thomas Becket. (20) In the same way, the old Longbridge festival on St. Peter’s day, June 29th, must have been altered to the first Sunday after the day of this popular but political saint. He must have been a favourite in this neighbourhood, for at Mere it is probable that in one of the windows (21) of the south chapel the Archbishop figured there is Becket, and certainly in 1220 there was an altar in that church to his honour. Again, some time between 1165 and 1170 he grants an indulgence of forty days to benefactors of the Church at Heytesbury and to those who piously visit the relicts there; and in 1220 his episcopal “slipper” (crepida) is mentioned among the treasures of the church. It is quite possible, too, that Norton Bavant has a trace of him in one of the bells, which bears this inscription:- “Sancte Tome, ora pro nobis.”
We get a glimpse of some of these churches and the clergy in the account of a visitation held by Dean Wanda in 1220, who was Dean when the first service was held in the new Cathedral. Horningsham had a stone church roofed with wooden shingles; its churchyard was not enclosed, but was “open to beasts, and routed up by the pigs,” large droves of which were fed in the neighbouring forest. Hill Deverill had a stone church, in need of repair, and with the internal fittings dilapidated. There is a mistake in Hoare’s account of the visitation of this church. He gives (Heytesbury Hundred, p.11), “est dedicanda,” “it has yet to be dedicated”; but Jones, Regist. Osmundi, i., 312, gives the right reading, “est dedicata,” “is dedicated.” The remark, therefore, in Wilts. Archaeological Magazine, vol. xxviii., p.239, must be corrected.
The entries are precise and business-like, chiefly inventories of books, vestments, and ornaments; sometimes of tithes, and of repairs needed, and dilapidations.” The “insufficient hymnaries” of these poor churches, the “missals that need binding,” the “old and thumbed psalters,” point to the dearness and scarcity of books, quite as much as to neglect; although no doubt this visitation stirred things up.
We find a few more local traces of the later history of the Church, though no doubt much more might be gathered from the history of the Collegiate church at Heytesbury.
Traces of the Reformation are found in the reports of Edward the Sixth’s Commissioners in 1553, who visited Hill, Kingston, Longbridge, and Monkton, and who took away some of the church plate at Hill Deverill. Is it the recollectin of this that survives in the oral legend that “church plate” is buried in a certain field-well or hidden in a lane? It seems to point to more than the ordinary “buried treasure” of folk-lore. The Commissioners also reserved plate “for the King’s use,” at Heytesbury, Horningsham, Tytherington, Knook, both Codfords, Upton, and Boyton.
The date of the registers at Hill must be placed earlier than was stated in Wilts Archaeological Magazine, vol. xxviii., p.242, for, although the earlier register itself is lost, the copies of the entries made in it are preserved in the Decanal registry at Salisbury. They are in good handwriting, and well preserved, and run from 1587 to 1721. They give many names, all of which have now disappeared from the parish, though some occur close by. They also give the names of churchwardens and clergy, so that it is now possible to make out a more complete list than that which is given in Hoare or in Wilts Archaeological Magazine, vol. xxviii., p.241.
In the time of the Commonwealth – 1654 – we find Mr. John White ejected from his living by the Parliament, and presumably William Parry, Vicar of Longbridge Deverill, was another victim of this time. (22) In 1707 we first hear of a school; it was at Longbridge, and thirty-two children were taught. £4 per annum were “given by a private person,” and the offertory was applied to it.
Two names, which are still sometimes heard at Brixton, “The Liberty,” and “Smoke Alley,” have some interest in connection with the Church. The name of “The Liberty,” or “Liberties,” still used in Brixton, probably illustrates its ownership by a religious house, the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy, and the Abbot’s right of private jurisdiction. Possibly the name “Smoke Alley” points to the same fact, for in some manors, formerly belonging to religious houses, there is still paid, as appendant to these manors, the ancient Peter’s Pence, by the name of Smoke money.” (23) The “Liberties” might also be, not those of the whole manor, but that of “one hide of land which the Church of the manor possesses,” mentioned in Domesday Book. Also, at Whitecliff, which is near Smoke Alley, (Hoare, p.7), a tithing of Brixton, a holding of 1½ hides is apparently a separate holding of the Abbot of Glastonbury.
Of course the architecture and monuments in the churches plainly show the changes which time brings. Thus, there is an excellently carved head of Edward I. or II. built into the wall of the Vicarage at Norton, and many more significant things might be found by looking. For example, a curious wooden Jacobean monument in Hill Deverill church is in memory of Sir Henry Coker, a “King’s man,” who was at Worcester fight. He is depicted resting his head upon a “Bibell,” and his feet upon the “Status.” There is also some fine Jacobean work at Sherrington.
Pursuing the same method as before, we find that oral traditions about the land still give us glimpses into its history. Some field-names which are still in use are as old as the days when Glastonbury Abbey was the owner, for we find them in a Glastonbury survey of the 13th century. We may pass over the shadowy owners in Early English times, till we find much of the upper part of the valley in the hands of the Abbey. (24) The wealth of this magnificent foundation culminated in the 10th century; by the 11th decay had set in. Out of the enormous mass of Glastonbury papers at Longleat, the most important of which have been examined by Canon Jackson, the Somerset Record Society have printed (1891) the “Rentalia et Custumaria” of Michael de Ambresbury, with a valuable and succinct preface by Bishop Hobhouse and notes by Mr. C. Elton. Michael de Ambresbury was Abbot of Glastonbury from 1235 to 1260, and caused a survey to be made of all the Abbey estates, and it is in this survey that a full account of Longbridge is given (p.133). As the work is rather inaccessible, it will be well to give some extracts from it, for the account presents several features of interest. The local names which this list gives are the following:-
The Pottery and a mill (both at Crockerton). Lustiggesbrom, Benchacre, Sandvei, Werescumbe, or Worscombe, Wdeleise (Woodleas), Blankland, Gareshurthe, Wexingaker, Tonfurlong, Reeves hammes (that is, large riverside meadows), Sulstiche, Goddingchestiche, Rogediche, Cuslei, Piddewllmede, Forsfelde (also Forfelde), Westcampus, Suthcampus, Braddemede.
Of these names the following are still in use, and the place can be identified:- The Ham, Worscombe, Sand Street, Broadmead. The name Horloc appears in the list of tenants, and a field on the Manor Farm is still called “Horlock’s.”
In the same way, field-names going back to 1300 can still be identified at Mere (25) and Maiden Bradley. (26) The total number of names of tenants is ninety-eight, which, allowing an average of four persons to each household, would give about four hundred inhabitants to Longbridge and Crockerton. The name of the clergyman (persona, parson) is given as Walter, so this adds an earlier name to the list of the clergy given by Hoare, whose list begins with the year 1306. A detailed account is given of the holding of the ale-feast:-
“The lord of the Manor may hold three feasts in the year for the estates of Longbridge and Monkton. On Saturday, the married men and young men come after dinner and are served three times with ale; on Sunday the husbands and wives come with their pennies, and they can come back again the next day, if they will. The young men must pay a halfpenny (obolus) a head if they come on the Sunday; but on the Monday they can come and drink for nothing, provided they do not sit on [or perhaps “above”] the bench. Any one of them caught sitting down must pay his half-penny as before. These rights, say the jury, belong only to the natives of the manor and their children; a stranger who is servant to anyone in the manor, or who is staying there, shall have no share in the rights.”
We may be sure that these curiously minute rules were kept strictly, but such feasts must have led to abuses, for just at this time the Archbishop forbad the presence of the clergy at them; and a hundred years later Archbishop Langham discountenances them. But in the words of Mr. Elton, we must bear in mind:
“the life of the ancient tenantry, their patient struggles with fortune, and their rarely seen and somewhat dismal holidays. The Merry England of the thirteenth century was a place where there was much to do and little to get; and the predecessors of our modern farmers had a great deal of hard work with very little in the way of amusement to lighten it.”
To this time we may probably refer the traces of old cultivation and pennings among the downs. There are many traces of mediaeval agriculture, probably of the 14th century, and cattle pennings noticeable in the broken hill-country behind Longbridge, Brixton and Sutton. Light land was plentiful, and after one portion was worked out, another was ploughed up, and the whole manor was worked like a co-operative farm.
Other early place-names are preserved in common talk, and not elsewhere. Sometimes their reason is plain, sometimes not. Why was a cottage or two, that stood at Hill Deverill, in the meadows away from the village, on the old pathway to Brixton, called Rehoboth? The word means “room” or “space” (Genesis, xxvi., 22). It is found as a place-name at Warminster, where it is away from the town, and at Dublin, where it is towards the country, and in all three cases it is near a river; perhaps the idea was taken from Genesis, xxxvi., 37, “Rehobath by the river.”
Other names are puzzling. The so-called “Jews’ wall,” at Longbridge, is the remains of the wall of the yard that adjoined the house built by one of the Thynnes, near the church, and standing certainly up till 1600. Local legend tells, of course, of a Jew who was found murdered on the hill, and who was buried here when the churchyard was refused. Now at Lincoln and Bury St. Edmund’s are buildings called Jews’ houses – almost the first houses of stone that superseded the habitations of the English burghers. (27) Anthony Wood says that there was a mount outside Oxford Castle called “The Jews’ Mound.” Did the name get applied to any old stonework? The “Jews’ Kitchen” is the name given to a building in Cornwall by “Q” in his novel, The Splendid Spur, and “Jews’ houses” is the name of any old smelting works in Cornwall. There is also a kind of lias stone found at Wedmore, in Somerset, in large blocks, locally called “Jews,” but they are said not to bear cutting, so apparently that cannot be the derivation. In the name “Devil’s parrock,” at Hill, we may see the old usage which left small bits of land unused under the open field system, for elsewhere we find “Cloutie’s croft,” and “the gude-man’s feld,” which may never be cultivated, originally with the idea of giving something to the evil spirits. And the name “Gun’s-church” is a puzzle. It is a round barrow standing on the southern extremity of Hill, away on the down, and the Teutonic “spectral hunt” has become localised round it. (28)
Two surnames which occur in Brixton registers, Dredge and Maslin, give a glimpse into mediaeval farming. “Dredge” is mixed corn, sown together, such as oats wheat and barley; the word is used in the margin of Job, xxiv., 6, “Maslin” is “miscellin,” Latin mixtilio, and is bread made of a mixture of rye and wheat-flour.
At the dissolution of the Monasteries, the Glastonbury estates in Monkton and Longbridge were bought by Sir John Thynne, as the rhyme has it:-
“Horner and Thynne
When the monks went out, they came in”;
but probably the change of owners affected the inhabitants but little. Nor is it likely that this district had felt the great change which began in 1460, when wool competed with corn-growing in some parts so severely, that in the words of an unnamed petitioner to the Crown in 1536:-
“The ploughs be decayed, and the farm-houses and other dwelling houses; so that, where there were twenty or thirty dwelling-houses, they be now decayed, ploughs and all the people clean gone . . . and no more parishioners in many parishes, but a neat-herd and a shepherd, instead of three-score or four-score persons,”
for on these upland farms there was room for both plough and sheepfold. In the curious oral tradition about the deep-cut thicket-clad road by Longbridge Church, where ghostly “woolpacks” might tumble out upon the head of the nightly traveller or the straying child, we may have a recollection of this staple trade, which began no doubt in the earliest times.
There are no more oral traditions till the Civil Wars begin. Of them we still hear an echo in Hill, where traces of the British village are popularly said to be the remains of houses which were battered by the cannon. The times were lively in the neighbourhood, for Ludlow, of Maiden Bradley, and Wansey, of Warminster, were strong Parliament men. There was a skirmish at Crockerton, and it would have been possible to hear the guns at the siege of Wardour Castle in 1642-3. From Mr. Ruddle’s calculations in Wilts Notes and Queries, No.36, p.537, we may take the population f the Deverills in 1676 to have been approximately as follows:- Brixton, 121; Kingston, 320; Monkton, 96; Long bridge (which probably includes Crockerton), 480. Hill, Tytherington, Knook and Heytesbury, which are all ecclesiastically connected, do not appear in this voluntary census return, which had a special purpose. It was set on foot by the Bishop of London, in order to ascertain the numbers of Church people, Roman Catholics, and Nonconformists, above the age of 16, and the figures in the return have a suspicious way of reaching round numbers in tens. The numbers above are reached by adding 60 per cent. for children under 16. (29) Four Roman Catholic families are found at Monkton, and three at Kingston. This is probably to be attributed to their connection with the district of Donhead, Semley, Tisbury, and the Deanery of Chalke generally, of which Wardour was the centre, where there is a considerable number of Roman Catholics recorded.
Passing on to the eighteenth century, we find a few sign left of the various trades which at that time made each village fairly self-sufficing, the weavers, tanners, potters, candle-makers. In the West, many rural districts of Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, were prosperous by cottage industries; indeed the prosperity of the rural classes depended more on these by-industries than upon agricultural wages (Social England, v., 132, 133). A few large windows where looms stood and “went hickety-snackety,” as an old man who remembered them said, can still be seen, especially at Crockerton, Heytesbury and Tytherington, for Heytesbury was a seat of cloth making, and Five Ash Lane, in Sutton, was the road by which those who had taken out work to do in their homes went to and from the mills with the stuff. In the midst of this agricultural country there was a settlement of weavers upon the moor-like heath near Crockerton, working at the broad-cloth. The potter’s industry there, as we have seen, goes back to the thirteenth century, and another of its industries was the making of whetstones from the local stone. There are still old men who will look among the material of houses that have been pulled down, to see if any of the stone is of the kind that may be ground down into whetstones. The ague which was the common complaint there, was due mainly to the standing water of the potters’ clay pits, and partly to the sunless situation of the small valley. Higher up the river valley it was due to the marshy reed-beds and swamps. The carpenter’s industry has decayed, and so has that of the innkeeper. Here and there, on or near the main coach-roads, we come upon the traces of fine inns, such as “The Tippling Philosopher,” (30) at Monkton, which would be at the height of their prosperity at the close of the eighteenth century, when vehicles and roads were greatly improved. The milestones bear the date 1767, and part of the construction of the roads consisted in the cutting of steep hills, on which the marks of the older path can still be seen.
Of the Reform movement in 1830 I have heard nothing, but it was not a burning question in this district. There were quite lately some memories from Hindon, above the valley, of election times when the borough returned two members, with scenes of disorder and a spirit of corruption. “There was no law at election times,” said my narrator.
Some can still remember machine-breaking, when threshing-machines were first introduced.
The condition of the working class during this time would be a fruitful subject, but it is out of place here, because many of the old conditions lasted till quite lately, and no great change occurred till the great migrations to Australia and America about 1860 onwards, and the still greater migration of the last twenty years common to all country districts. Even up to the nineteenth century the words of an old English dialogue of the beginning of the eleventh century may be applied almost without alteration:-
The ploughman says: “I work hard; I go out at day-break, driving the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the plough. Be it never so stark a winter, I dare not linger at home for awe of my lord. Every day I must plough a full acre or more . . . I have a boy driving the oxen with a goad-iron, who is hoarse with cold and shouting . . . Mighty hard work it is.”
Such are some of the changes through which this district passed and which have left their traces up to the present day. They reflect, not the overshadowing predominance of some great house, with its rise and fall, and with an importance often exaggerated by the novelist, and sometimes by the historian; but the progress of a settled society, quietly living its own life, working out its own destiny, and sharing in the larger movement of the whole country.
1 Notices of Warminster are omitted, as its history has been thoroughly worked out by the Rev. J. J. Daniell.
2 There is no connection with the name D’Evreux, which was suggested as possible in Wilts Archaeological Magazine, vol. xxviii., p.236. The “Roll of Battle Abbey” is a transparent and grotesque forgery” says Freeman (History of Sicily, vol. ii., Appendix, p.468).
3 Freeman, History of Sicily, I., 83.
4 Guest, Orig. Celt., ii., 201.
5 Old Dorset, p.110.
6 I do not know how many Roman sites there are in South Wilts. Why does Kelly’s Directory of Wilts (p.3) say that there are Roman settlements at Heytesbury and Codford?
7 For the account of the excavations, the pavements, and the human remains under the wall, see Vetusta Monumenta, ii. 43, for the year 1777.
8 Devizes, because the first name would be “ad Divisas.” Compare “ad episcopi arbores,” on p.116.
9 Moated Mounds: article in Antiquary for August and September, 1902.
10 It will be well to settle the derivation of Brixton once for all, since a demonstrably false derivation has been the cause of an error in the history of Alfred, which is still repeated by Mr. Plummer in his recent life of Alfred. Sir R. Hoare was the first to suggest that Egbert’s stone, at which Alfred was met by “all the men of Somerset and the men of Wiltshire” before he defeated the Danes at Ethanun, was Brixton. Now Hoare, with all his industry, is not strong on philology, and his derivation is mere guess-work. It is practically certain that Brixton is contracted from Brictric’s-tun, Brictric being the lord of the manor in the time of Edward the Confessor, as given in Domesday Book. Three out of the five Deverills are named from their early owners. And, to take the argument from philology, if Ecgbright was corrupted at all, it is not the accented syllable, “Ecg,” that would disappear, but the unaccented, “bright,” and the name Ecgbright’s-stane would become something like Exston, or Egston, not Brixton.
Again, it has been demonstrated by the Rev. C. W. Whistler with great probability that Ecgbright’s stane is White Sheet Hill, in Stourton (Antiquary for June and July, 1901) – although the ghost of the false derivation still haunts his pages, in some measuring-lines that he gives.
If further proof of the old form of the name is needed, the name is spelt Brightricston.
