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To this time we may probably refer the traces of old cultivation 
and pennings among the downs. There are many traces of medieval 
agriculture, probably of the 14th century, and cattle pennings 
noticeable in the broken hill-country behind Longbridge, Brixton, 
and Sutton. Light land was plentiful, and after one portion was 
worked out, another was ploughed up, and the whole manor was 
worked like a co-operative farm. 
_ Other early place-names are preserved in common talk, and not 
elsewhere. Sometimes their reason is plain, sometimes not. Why 
was a cottage or two, that stood at Hill Deverill, in the meadows 
away from the village, on the old pathway to Brixton, called 
Rehoboth ? The word means “ room ” or “space ” (Genesis, xxvi., 22). 
‘It is found as a place-name at Warminster, where it is away from 
the town, and at Dublin, where it is towards the country, and in 
all three cases it is near a river; perhaps the idea was taken from 
Genesis, xxxvi., 37, “Rehoboth by the river.” 
a Other names are puzzling. The so-called “ Jews’ wall,” at Long- 
bridge, is the remains of the wall of the yard that adjoined the 
house built by one of the Thynnes, near the church, and standing- 
certainly up till 1660. Local legend tells, of course, of a Jew who 
was found murdered on the hill, and who was buried here when the 
urchyard was refused. Now at Lincoln and Bury St. Edmund’s 
we buildings still called Jews’ houses—almost the first houses of 
stor e that superseded the habitations of the English burghers.’ 
Anthony Wood says that there was a mount outside Oxford 
Castle called “The Jews’ Mound.” Did the name get applied to 
any old stonework? The “Jews’ Kitchen” is the name given to a 
uilding in Cornwall by “Q.” in his novel, Zhe Splendid Spur, and 
Jews’ houses” is the name of any old smelting works in Cornwall. 
h ere is also a kind of lias stone found at Wedmore, in Somerset, 
in le ge blocks, locally called “ Jews,” but they are said not to bear 
utting, so apparently that cannot be the derivation. In the name 
Devil's parrock,” at Hill, we may see the old usage which left 
small bits of land unused under the open field system, for elsewhere 
we find “Cloutie’s croft,” and “the gude-man’s field,” which may 
'See Social England, I., 326, 380, for Jews as builders. 
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