444 Recent Wiltshire BooH, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 



Baldwin Brown is right in placing it in the latter part of the 10th 

 century, an opinion which coincides with the original opinion expressed 

 by J. H. Parker, E. A. Freeman, and Canon Jones. The notes on the 

 wool trade, though necessarily short, are good. 



" Ancient Barns in Wiltshire," by Percy Mundy, with a good photo 

 of the interior of Tisbury (Place House) Barn, which, together with 

 those at Bradford and Lacock, are described. The writer notes that the 

 Barn at Wolf hall " was not, as has been often stated, the scene of the 

 actual wedding of Jane Seymour and Henry VIII. . . . The marriage 

 itself took place at Hampton Court." Melksham, Stockton, Cherhill, 

 Hill Deverill, Pickwick, Biddestone, and Great Chalfield Barns are also 

 mentioned. 



A pleasant article on " Salisbury Plain," with a photo of a Shepherd 

 and his Sheep, is by Pamela Tennant. 



"Pre-Norman Sculptured Stones in Wiltshire," by the Bishop of 

 Bristol, is a valuable paper, profusely illustrated with photos of the 

 Colerne, Eamsbury, and Amesbury Stones, and diagrams of those at 

 Bradford-on-Avon, Littleton Drew, and Eamsbury, with others outside 

 the County of Wilts. The Bishop discourses on the probable route of 

 Aldhelm's funeral from Doulting to Malmesbury, and on the sites of the 

 crosses set up at the resting-places. As to the Ramsbury Stones the 

 Bishop, on the strength of the statement that Odo, at Canterbury, was 

 buried on the south side of the altar with a " Pyramid " over his tomb, 

 and of the fresh and unweathered condition of the stones when found, 

 thinks that " the Ramsbury monuments, each consisting of a body stone 

 with a shaft or pyramid with a crosshead, probably stood at the north 

 and south sides of the Pre-Norman altar." He points out that the 

 upper and smaller piece of cross shaft (as now set up in the Church) 

 agrees in the character of its ornament with the smaller of the two body 

 stones. The portions of cross shaft standing beside the path in the 

 churchyard of Littleton Drew are here for the first time carefully 

 described. On one of these are the four large letters which constitute 

 the only remains of an inscription yet found on any Saxon stones in 

 this part of England. The ornament, too, the Bishop notes as being of 

 a very unusual " foliaginous " type. The newlj'-found crosshead at 

 Amesbury and the stone built into the tower at Rodbourne Cheney are 

 also described. The latter the Bishop regards as also a Pre-Norman 

 crosshead. The large stone now preserved in the Saxon Church at 

 Bradford is said to be "a combination of Irish work and Lombardic 

 work. Its dimensions and thickness show that it served as a jamb to 

 one of the narrow doorways characteristic of the period and of the little 

 Church. The divergent spirals are most unmistakably Irish, and the 

 border is Anglian or Lombardic ; the running pattern is found in one 

 of the Durham manuscripts of date as early as Aldhelm's time. The 

 Bishop suggests that the Lombard influence seen here and elsewhere is 

 due to the fact that Birinus, who baptised the King of Wessex at 

 Dorchester (Oxon), in 635, was connected with Lombardy, having been 

 consecrated Bishop at Genoa, in 634, by the Archbishop of Milan. In 



