36 
very sunny and sheltered situation. The ground is in terraces, 
but whether they were made for the vines or for the later native 
industry of clothmaking is uncertain. 
We have at Bath the street called the Vineyards—but I have 
not been able to find any record of the Vineyards that were once 
there beyond the name. In such a position I should have 
thought they must have been noticed by some of the many 
writers on Bath; but the writers on Bath—Warner, Wright, 
Earle, &c., are quite silent about them. Vineyards are 
beneath the dignity of historians. The only old record that I 
can find of them is in the ‘“ Municipal Records of Bath,” lately 
published, where (p. 41) there is a note on the boundaries of 
Bath in a charter of Queen Elizabeth. Part of the boundary is 
‘‘ the highway leading from Weston towards Walcot, so continuing 
by the said way into a close of pasture called the Vineyards.” 
This looks as if even then the Vineyards were discontinued and 
the land put into pasture. 
But if the culture of the vine was discontinued there, it was 
not entirely given up near Bath, In Savage and Meyler’s “ Map 
of Five Miles Round Bath,” published in 1805, there is a 
Vineyard marked at Claverton, with the vines distinctly shown. 
The site can be easily made out, and it is a garden attached to 
the Vineyards Farm. It is enclosed on three sides by an old 
wall, and it contains an old building which Mr. Skrine considers to 
have been the wine-press, The property was purchased in 1701 
by Mr. Richard Holder, and part of the purchase money was £28 
for ‘four hogsheads of wine of the Vineyards of Claverton.” 
Before leaving Somersetshire we may note the record of a Vine- 
yard at Wilcot, in the adjoining County of Wiltshire, because it 
has a special note of commendation in ‘‘Domesday” :—“ Ibi 
Ecclesia nova, et domus optima et vinea bona.” I am informed by 
the present Vicar of Wilcot that he has cultivated vines there for 
more than thirty years, and during all that time he has never 
succeeded in picking a single ripe grape. 
