By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.8.A. 85 
adjoining Wiltshire: and as it lies under the northern escarpment 
of Salisbury Plain it used to be called “‘ Westbury under the Plain ” 
_ to distinguish it more particularly from Westbury-on-Trym, near 
Bristol, and Westbury-upon-Severn, both in Gloucestershire, as well 
as from Westbury, near Wells, in Co. Somerset. 
One peculiarity is that, whereas all the other hundreds in the 
county contain, more or less, many parishes, the hundred of West- 
bury consists of only one—the parish of Westbury. It is very 
large, somewhere about thirty miles round, the town being nearly 
in thecentre. For those who may wish to take so long a walk, there 
is for their guidance an old Perambulation deed, taken three hundred. 
years ago, which describes the parish boundaries with a very curious 
minuteness, It includes several smaller places, villages and hamlets, 
as Bratton, Westbury Leigh, Dilton, Heywood, &e. Of the most 
ancient inhabitants there are vestiges in plenty, both above and 
underground. On the downs above Bratton are the oldest, the 
usual tumuli or burial mounds, and the great earthwork called Bratton 
Castle. There are also traces of the Romans, and, after them, of 
the Romanised Britons. Wherever the name of Ridge or Street 
occurs in a country place, it is probable that something Roman 
is not far off: and so it is here. There are, as is well known, four 
or five principal highways called Roman (though some of them are 
suspected to be really older), traversing the whole length of Britain 
in various directions; but there were by-ways as well as highways, 
and these are now to be discovered by local observers. The Romans 
were at very great pains and cost in making their roads: some were 
paved, others made with gravel or stone, but generally raised above 
the level of the ground so as to present a slight ridge. Ridge is a 
common country people’s name for an old Roman way; one in 
Yorkshire, a very perfect specimen, goes, in the dialect of that 
county, by the name of the Roman “rig.” Now that name occurs 
here at several places, in one continuous line, You have first, 
simply, Ridge (Rudge, as they call it), Hawkridge, Coteridge, Stor- 
ridge, Bremridge, and Norridge (1.e., North Ridge) : and you have also 
Short Street; all contiguous: so that there can be little doubt about 
a Roman by-way having gone along there, though where it came 
D2 
