826 Rood Ashton, §c. 
4 
Now, under the particular circumstances of the present time, when 
mutton and other meats have risen to such a price as to frighten all 
the housekeepers of Trowbridge and elsewhere: and when, even 
those who can afford to buy have been at their wit’s end how to 
keep it during the late sultry weather, nothing can be more useful 
than to know what the learned Serjeant Hoskins—a lawyer too— 
particularly desired to know, and wrote down to this cunning county 
of Wiltshire to ascertain, “ How to keep mutton sweet for seven 
weeks without salt.”” So Aubrey immediately wrote to Mr. Robert 
Beach, of Steeple Ashton, who replies :— 
‘« The manner was this. Near Claverton, by Bath, in the stone quarries, are 
some caves; aud this Brewer the sheepstealer kept his stolen sheep in the caves, 
alive! This was the secret.” 
You are not asked to follow Brewer’s example in stealing sheep ; 
but considering the scarcity of it, it might perhaps be not amiss if 
we could contrive to do without it for a little while, and keep our 
mutton sweet seven weeks without salt, by Jetting the sheep live. 
The church of Steeple Ashton need not be described, as you have 
examined it in your excursion. The body of it was built about 
1500; the north aisle by a Mr. Robert Long, in 1501; the south 
aisle by Walter Lucas and his wife Maud. It had once a spire, 
which Stukeley says was cased with lead. It was much injured by 
lightning in July, 1670, and hardly had been repaired when it was 
again shattered by a similar accident in October of the same year. 
The storm killed the workmen upon it, “in nictu oculi,’ says 
Aubrey, [in the twinkling of an eye”’]. 
At the Bell Inn, Seend, there used to be a drawing of the church 
with the spire on it: but it is doubtful whether it was a dond fide 
representation: perhaps taken only from imagination or description. 
There is also a curious account in the Archzologia, of the effects 
of lightning at this unlucky Steeple Ashton, in 1772. Two clergy- 
men, the Revs. Mr. Wainhouse (curate of the parish), and Mr. 
Pitcairn, of Trowbridge, were in the parlour of Steeple Ashton 
vicarage-house, “ when there came a loud clap of thunder and all of 
a sudden they saw a ball of fire between them, about the size [as 
they describe it] of a 6d. loaf, surrounded by a dark smoke. It 
