36 Westbury under the Plain. 
from, or led to, may not be now very evident. Under ground in 
different places all along that side of the parish numerous coins and 
fragments of pottery have turned up: many at Ham, a large open 
tract north-west of the town. Tradition has it that old Westbury 
stood there, and that it was battered (our friend Oliver Cromwell 
again) from Bratton Camp. Sir R. C. Hoare was told by a quarry- 
man that in a little piece of ground, then lately ploughed up, called 
Compton’s Plot, was the well of the old town, into which all the 
valuables had been thrown. Im the field between that plot and 
Heywood the same man had assisted in digging up the foundations 
of a large building of well-bewn stone ; and another labourer spoke 
of a tesselated pavement found near the well. Cinerary urns have 
been unearthed at the Iron Works!; at Highsomley many Roman 
relics; and in Mr. Phipps’s garden at Charleote, where I happened 
some time ago to see the men making new flower-beds, the earth 
appeared to be almost black and strewed thickly with fragments of 
pottery as if it had been an ancient cemetery. There is no record 
of the state of things here in the days of these Roman roads and 
tesselated pavements, nor does anything appear to be known about 
it till we come towards the end of the Saxon period, when the whole 
belonged to the Crown. By degrees, in Norman times, certain 
portions were granted to monasteries and to the Cathedral of Old 
Sarum : the rest was disposed of to the laity. But the monasteries 
did not get so large a share in this as in neighbouring parishes. 
Whilst the house of Bonhommes at Edington possessed the greater 
1 Tn April, 1881, the late Mr. Henry Cunnington wrote to the Devizes Gazette: 
“The workmen engaged at the Westbury Iron Works have just discovered, about 
two feet under the surface of the soil, a cinerary urn, about eight inches high, 
containing the burnt bones of a young person about sixteen years of age. In 
the mouth of this urn another smaller one was placed, to prevent the earth from 
falling in on the interment. What is very remarkable, on taking out the contents 
of the lower urn, a very fine coin of Constantine’s was found at the bottom, 
amongst the ashes. The coin is a bronze, and was struck in London. On the 
obverse is the head of Constantine, laureated. Inscription : Emperor Constantine, 
Pius, Felix, Augustus. Reverse: Mars marching to the right, with shield and 
spear. Inscription: Mars, the defender of the country ; under the figure P.L.N. 
Pecunia Londinensis), showing that the coin was struck in London. Both the 
urns are in fine condition, and will shortly be placed in the Devizes Museum.” 
