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Aooy Ashton, Kc., 
By the Rev. Canon J, E. Jackson, F.S.A.1 
GO the Paper which I am now about to have the honour of 
reading to you, I prefix the brief title of “ Rood Ashton,” 
cordial welcome and noble hospitality with which you have just 
been received at that house by Mr. and Mrs. Long. But the name ~ 
implies a good deal more. It is but the text, which when opened 
out will present an outline of the history of those estates in the 
immediate neighbourhood of this town, of which Rood Ashton is 
the head quarters. 
Rood Ashton proper, was in former times only a very small part 
of a larger manor called “The Manor of Ashton:” but before 
entering upon its history as the property of any human being what- 
soever, I would say a few words as to its condition in times some- 
what remotely antecedent to manorial arrangements, whether great 
or small. For we should be omitting one of the most curious 
features of the whole story were we to take no notice of the geological 
structure of the district. Archexologists and topographers taking 
pen in hand to write about any place, go to the Churches for me- 
morials of deceased parishioners; to Record Offices, for odds and 
ends of ancient local history; to the Manor Houses, to look at 
old family pictures, and to ask questions about pedigrees, &. Then 
why not search records that have been on the spot, imbedded in the 
ground, far older, and very often far better preserved, than family 
pictures and pedigrees: records that cannot be so easily copied or 
invented as a picture or a pedigree; and that are, in the most 
genuine sense of the word, arch@ological? So, if you please, a 
1 This Paper was read before the Wilts Archeological Society at the Annual 
Meeting at Trowbridge, August 8th, 1872. 
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