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each year more and more vertical, as the ploughman ploughs 
each year a few inches more into the inner edge, and throws over 
each year a few inches of soil on the outer edge. Any of you 
who would like to examine them may find plenty within an easy 
walk of Bath—there are signs of them even onthe North Common— 
there. are plenty on the hill sides near Swanswick and Cold 
Ashton, and, indeed all up the Cotteswold, and you will see that 
they are all planned with the design of getting a good sunny 
aspect and a shelter from the North and East. One of the best 
I know is at Upton in my own Parish. The field is only about 
three acres, but in that small space provision has been made for a 
perfect garden, cr whatever else it may have been. The field has 
-a steep slope to the South and West. At the bottom are three 
wide but rather shallow terraces running East and West, the rest 
-of the slope being taken up with very broad terraces and very 
‘deep steps, running North and South, at right angles to and 
‘dying into the lower ones. By these means the place was a 
perfect suntrap, with complete shelter from the North and East. 
If Vines would do well anywhere it would be there, but we have 
no evidence that there ever was a Vineyard there, and there is 
no proof, as far as I know, that any of the ‘“‘lychetts” were so 
used. They may have been so occasionally, and very probably 
were, but I should think it quite certain that they were not made 
exclusively for Vines, but for anything for which sun and shelter 
would be good. The chief interest in them lies in the evidence 
they give that in times gone by a much larger extent of our hill 
‘country was under the spade or plough than there is now. 
Another point of interest in the old Vineyards is the question 
-of the quality of the Wine. You have heard that William of 
Malmesbury thought the Gloucestershire Wine as good as French 
Wine, and in 1820 Phillips gave his judgment that some English 
Wine “was quite equal to the Grave Wines, and in some 
instances, when kept for eight to ten years, it has been drunk 
as Hock by the nicest judges.” According to Hughes, a writer 
