205 
Kingswood Forest, so that it is not very long ago when there 
were special reasons for giving special names to enclosures, 
marking them as legal (or sometimes, probably, illegal), 
enclosures from the surrounding open country or forest. We 
have a good instance of such a country in the neighbouring 
county of Wilts, where very large farms exist, but where 
the enclosed parts of the farms are often not more than one-tenth 
or even one-twentieth of the whole; the rest is all open unen- 
closed country. In connection with this I would mention that 
we have several fields still called moor and heath, which, no doubt, 
mark the site of old open country though now long enclosed. 
We have Kipsley Moor, Kenn Moor, Waddown Moor, Press 
Moor, and Aldermoor. We have also Moorcroft which would be 
a croft adjoining the moor, and I should have mentioned Croft 
among the generic names, for it isa very old word meaning a 
little field. It is used in the 14th century by Langland* in 
Piers Plowman, who also mentions Parrok. But besides Moor- 
croft we have in Bitton only one other field called the Croft now 
part of the Vicar’s glebe. Besides the moors and the commons 
previously mentioned we have Wigley Common, and we have 
Hanham Heath, now called Hanham Common, and Caddy or 
Cadbury Heath. There is still heather to be gathered on 
Hanham Common, but Cadbury Heath is built on and cultivated, 
and the nearest place where I can now find heather is on Siston 
Common, just over the borders of the Parish, and on the railway 
banks adjoining it, and these banks are now getting gradually 
covered not only with heather but also like the neighbouring 
Rodway Hill with the dwarf gorse, ulex nanus, a somewhat 
uncommon plant, very like the common gorse, but sufficiently 
distinguished by some slight botanical differences and especially 
by its low prostrate habit, and by its flowering in the autumn 
‘and even in the early winter, instead of in the spring and early 
summer. 
* Thaune shaltow come by a crofte. v. 582, 
