2 The History of the Parish of AH Cannings. 



SwANBOROTJGH.^ This Hundred comprises no less than three of the 

 ancient hundreds of "Wilts. Thus, in the Hundred of Rugeberg 

 were Tilshead, Potterne, and the two Lavingtons : — in that of Stod- 

 FALD were All Cannings, Erehfont, Etchilhampton, Allington, 

 Stert, and Chirton : — in that of Swanborough were Rushall, 

 Alton Barnes, Alton Priors, Stanton, North Newnton, Marden, 

 and the Manningfords. All these, with the exception of Potterne, 

 which, as belonging to the Bishop of Sarum, was afterwards 

 joined to the Hundred of Cannings Episcopi, are now merged in 

 the large Hundred of Swanborough, 



Originally, no doubt, the whole of what is now comprised in the 

 two parishes of All Cannings and Bishops Cannings formed but 

 one estate, belonging most probably to the King of "Wessex.^ An 

 early grant assigned the latter to the Bishops of Wiltshire, and by 

 one or other of them it was at some period previous to Domesday, 

 severed from its own hundred, (most likely that of Stodfald,)and 

 formed into an independent and " free hundred " belonging to their 

 see. At a later date probably, what we now call All Cannings was 

 bestowed by some royal benefactor on the Abbey of St. Mary, at 

 Winchester. Unfortunately there is no chartulary or register of 

 this abbey known at present, so that our information on this point is 

 defective. The Abbey, which was also called Nunn a- Minster, was 

 founded by Alfred the Great and his Queen Ethelswitha, and com- 

 pleted by their son Edward the Elder. It was subsequently re- 

 founded and restored by Bishop Ethelwold in 932. The estate at 



^ These names of the Hundreds, pointing as they do to remote times when 

 there were no towns or even villages of note from which they might take their 

 appellations, show us incidentally the antiquity of their institution. Ruge- 

 BEEG means the rough, (or hoar,) harroio ; a modern form of the name exists in 

 Rt-buet, and in Andrews and Dury's map of Wilts we have the form Rough;- 

 BEiDGE, a nearer approach to the original. Stodfald (the Anglo-Saxon Stod- 

 fald), means the fold for horses (or bteeds) ; we still have the expression a Uud 

 of horses. SwAN-BOROtrGH is possibly a corruption of Sand-beorg, that is 

 literally Sand-hill, from a large tumulus bearing that name, which is men- 

 tioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter relating to North Newnton. Cod. Dipl. 1109. 



*In the Hundred Rolls, II., 231, Cannings Episcopi, is described as "a free 

 hundred of the Bishop of Sarum, appertaining to the Church of Sarum, from 

 an ancient grant," (de veteri feoffamento). 



