27 i Pott erne. 



January 26th, 1753, was presented a short lime ago to the Society 

 by Lt.-Col. Perry Keene, and is preserved in the Museum. A copy 

 of the same was given in this Magazine (vol. xii., 256). 



Little more remains to be told. The history of Potterne for the 

 last hundred years is but that of an ordinary Wiltshire village, 

 having no stirring incidents to relate, and happily no persecutions 

 to chronicle. Our good friends of the Devizes Gazette used a 

 few years ago to head paragraphs now and then with the words " The 

 Potterne Lambs again" and tell us how sundry of them were brought 

 into the vicinity of the Market Place, to be cured by a little whole- 

 some bleeding, prescribed by the talented and witty Recorder or 

 some of his brother justices, for the complaints of giddiness in the 

 head, or unsteadiness in the gait, and especially too loud and dis- 

 orderly bleating. But these are now happily things of the past. 

 We can only hope that any chronicler who in days to come may fill 

 up the gaps in our sketch, or continue it to the days of some future 

 generation, though he may no longer be able to tell of episcopal 

 lords, or " crenellated " manor houses, will nevertheless have to 

 record in Potterne the honest industry, and successful progress, of 

 peace-loving, law-abiding Wiltshiremen. 



It will be no inapproriate mode of closing our account of Potterne 

 to dwell a little in detail on the Parish Church, and on matters more 

 or less closely connected with it. Our notice will include a list of 

 the ViCAES from the earliest period of which we have any records to 

 present time. 



The Parish Church. 



We have already mentioned that there was a church at Potterne 

 at as early a date as some time in the tenth century. It was not on 

 the site of the present church, but on lower ground near the mill. 

 The site is now used as garden-ground, but is still called the " Old 

 Churchyard.^^ For many centuries the site was parish property but 

 it has now passed into private hands. Some ancient fragments, 

 possibly from this early church, or, if not, from a second church 

 earlier in date than the present church, are still to be seen carefully 

 preserved in the vicarage garden. 



