By the Rev. A. C. Smith, M.A. 339 



little farther down the bourne, on the same plain, but three miles 

 distant, and within sight of our village. Indeed proximity to the 

 noble sanctuary of Abury, being the only cause of distinction to 

 this retired village, I have thought it not unlikely that its name 

 might somewhow be derived therefrom : and finding the Anglo- 

 Saxon Yte meaning " outermost," or " more outward," I have sur- 

 mised whether this could be the source whence the name of Yatesbury 

 came : certainly it has the advantage of applying equally to the old 

 form Etesberie, as well as the more modern name ; and would signify 

 perhaps the utmost limits, or suburbs, of Abury.' I should add that 

 Canon Jones in his interesting papers " on the Names of Places in 

 Wiltshire," suggests the possibility of Yatton on the west and 

 Yatesbury on the east, signifying the gates, entrances, or openings 

 into " the tongue of land " stretching from Cricklade and Malmes- 

 bury some fourteen miles broad and extending southward some fifty 

 miles long, which Dr. Edwin Guest ^ affirmed was still left in the 

 possession of the old inhabitants though in the very midst of what 

 had become English territory. Canon Jones however himself in- 

 clines to the opinion that the former part of our name is some cor- 

 ruption of a personal name. 



But whatever Yeatesbury or Etesberie may have been — and I fear 

 that part of our subject must for ever be wrapped in oblivion— there 

 is no question that modern Yatesbury is a very small unpretending 

 villaf'e, containing but fifty-seven houses, almost all of them cottages 

 of the very humblest type, universally built of the soft chalk-stone 

 of the locality, and thatched : moreover the village is compact, 

 without a single outlying cottage, though the houses for the most 

 part are detached, and stand singly in their several gardens. Not 

 that our village is without its pretensions : it can hold up its head, 

 and parcel itself out into divisions no less than its more populous 



' In connection with this view, I must not omit the strange tradition prevalent 

 in the parish that at one time houses extended from Yatesbury to Abury, and 

 that the two villages joined ! 



2 On the history of the early settlements of our English ancestors in this 

 country." Journal of Archaeolog. Institute for 1859, vol. xvi., pages 105—131. 

 Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 276. 



2 B ^ 



