26 



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



^N referring to the proceedings at our former General Meeting 

 at Marlborough, in September, 1859, just twenty years 

 ao^^Tt appears that though most of the points of archaeological 

 interest in the town and neighbourhood were visited and described, 

 it did not occur to any of us to make Savernake Forest the subject 

 of a paper. When I say ' ' to any of us," a kind of pang shoots 

 across the memory in being obliged to add that many of our col- 

 leagues who took an active part in those proceedings have, one by 

 one, disappeared altogether from our Society; leaving, comparatively, 

 only a few who can say that they are now making their second 

 archaeological visit to Marlborough. On the part also of the com- 

 pany, the lapse of twenty years must of necessity have wrought 

 considerable change. But we hope that the places of missing friends 

 have been supplied by new ones, kindly disposed towards our pur- 

 suits, and willing to hear something about the place, or the neigh- 

 bourhood of the place, at which they live. 



Perhaps the reason, why at our former Meeting, nothing was said 

 about the Forest, may have been that it did not appear to be a 

 strictly archaeological subject, but one more fit to be dealt with by 

 the brush of the painter or the pen of the poet. It certainly presents 

 a fine field for both : but as a matter of antiquity the fact is that 

 there are few things more ancient than our forests.^ 



1 Man wood, the quaint old writer of a volume on forest law, mentions Wiltshire 

 forests as among the earliest known : " It doth appear hy sundry ancient His- 

 tories as in the ' Concordantia Historiarum ' and others, that forests have been 

 alwaies in this realm from the first time that the same was inhabited. And also 

 you may read there, that Gurgentius, the son of Belinus, being a King of this 

 land, did make certain forests for his delight and pleasure in Wiltshire." The 

 old chroniclers connect this King Belinus with Billingsgate in London. It is — 

 if worth nothing more — a coincidence, that in the Wiltshire forest of Savernake, 

 amono- the boundary marks in the Perambulation of A.D. 1300 (28, Ed. I.), 

 between Holt and Stock, occurs the name of " Bellin-gaie." {Wilts Mag., 

 iv., 202, sixth line from foot of page.) It is still called ^e^^moor. 



