By John Watson-Taylor. 299 






















oldest of those of which any record is preserved is one of the reign 
of the Emperor Allectus (circa 293 A.D.), which was in a collection 
made by the Rev. Christopher Knipe, a former vicar, but the large 
majority of them are of a later date,and all are of common occurrence 
elsewhere. No other trace remains at Erlestoke of the Roman 
occupation, though it lasted four hundred years; and of the Saxons 
who succeeded them in the conquest of the south of England after 
an interval of forty years, the only memorial is in the tradition 
that some sixty years ago a Saxon stone coffin was unearthed 
within the “ Crate,’ an enclosure on the Sands, and that in the 
course of its removal to the churchyard it was broken into pieces, 
which have been lost. The location of the Roman coins seems to 
point to the Sands as the place where the village stood in these 
times, and the elevated situation is one that would afford security 
from sudden attack while allowing the inhabitants easy access, when 
in search of food, to the forest and the lake which probably occupied 
_ apartof the parish and later became a marsh (Earl Stoke Marsh '). 
With the Norman period the materials for local history begin 
to accumulate more rapidly, and of these the most important is 
Domesday Book, the report of the Commissioners appointed by 
William the Conqueror to discover who held the land and how 
much and on what terms they held it. In Domesday Book a 
Stoche is twice mentioned, but in each ease the reference is not 
to Erlestoke but to Bradenstoke,? and it may therefore be con- 
eluded that Erlestoke was part of another manor and included in 
its description. LErlestoke is not singular in this respect, for, to 
take a case from the immediate neighbourhood, the large parish of 
; Worton is included under Potterne, and just as Worton was con- 
nected with Potterne ecclesiastically as well as manorially, so also 
it is probable that Erlestoke being a chapelry of the parish of 
Melksham,* was a member also of that manor. Seend, which was 
1 Andrews & Dury, Map of Wiltshire, 1758. 
2 Jones, Domesday for Wiltshire, p. 68. 
3 Sarum Charters and Documents, A.D. 1220; Ecton, Thesaurus, p. 394. 
