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Notes on Shcrston Magna, by John Jones, F.A.S.L. 



Some years ago, when I was about to leave the county, I 

 remember recommending to the Cotteswold Club a visit to the 

 village of Sherston Magna, in Wiltshire, but lying immediately 

 upon the border line of Gloucestershire. Whether this excur- 

 sion was made by the Club I do not know, but there is so much 

 of historical interest about the place, and especially in that point 

 to which I believe I am the first to call attention, that I feel 

 justified in once more bringing it under your notice. I have 

 not myself visited the place since I was a boy, but I recollect 

 well the lines of earthworks and trenches traceable almost 

 everywhere around it, which bore out, to some extent, the 

 universal tradition of the inhabitants, and of the people of the 

 surrounding district, that it had once been a place of great 

 importance and strength, and that it was formerly called the 

 City of White Walls. This appellation, as will appear in the 

 sequel, is the point of importance which I wish to submit to 

 your consideration. 



Before I discuss this, I propose to give a brief summary of 

 the general history of the place, taking the events and cir- 

 cumstances connected with it in backward order, premising 

 that, being in the Hundred of Chippenham, to which the work 

 does not extend, no mention of it is made in the county history 

 of Sir E. C. HoARE. The dialect of the people was, (and I doubt 

 not is,) very peculiar ; amongst other things, I was much struck 

 with certain words, and modes of speech, which I had never 

 heard before, but which so impressed themselves upon my 

 memory, that when, many years afterwards, I commenced an 

 acquaintance with the Anglo-Saxon tongue, they came back to 

 o 



