14 



By the Eev. Canon Jackson, F.S.A. 



(Read at an Evening Meeting of the Wilts Arcliseological Society at Malmesbury, Aug. 5tli, 1862.) 



5T is usual with Archaeological Societies to bring with them 

 a little information about the places which they visit at 

 their Annual Meetings, and according to this custom you are now 

 to hear some account of Malmesbury. The town has, in its day, 

 seen a good deal of service, and makes no inconsiderable figure in 

 the domestic history of England. All that can be done in a single 

 paper, read for the amusement of an evening audience, must be, to 

 give an outline of principal events. 



The first thing that every body likes to know about the place 

 they live in is, that it is a very ancient one. We all love to trace 

 our origin up to dark ages and to lose it in clouds. In this you 

 shall have the fullest satisfaction : for one old chronicle saj's that 

 there was some kind of strong place here 596 years before Christ, 

 more than five centuries before the Romans occupied this country ; 

 that its name as well as that of the river, was then Bladon ; and 

 that the builder was a British king, who is mentioned as having 

 also built similar fortresses elsewhere in Wilts. Whether all this is 

 true or not, nobody can say, but I do not see any reason why it 

 should not be. The name of Bladon certainly occurs in ancient 

 documents, and any one who only considers the situation of the 

 town, on a hill with steep banks and streams nearly all round it, 

 will see at once that it was precisely of that sort which was sure to 

 be seized upon for defence of property, in days when property stood 

 in very great need of being defended. 



This was in the old British days before the Romans came. — 

 What use the Romans may have made of the hill and the streams 

 does not appear, for I do not remember to have heard that any 

 Roman remains have ever been found precisely upon the site of 



