‘170 Calne. 
Wans; and in a field called West Park, about a quarter of a mile 
“west of Bromham, the remains of a villa, close to the road from 
Chippenham to Devizes. A plate of a pavement discovered on this 
spot is given in Sir R. C. Hoare’s Ancient Wiltshire, vol. 11., p. 123. 
At Derry Hill in 1680 such quantities of brass coins that (Aubrey 
says) “the children played with them.” In 1753 was found at 
Studley a number of square Roman bricks, with the maker’s 
name, or mark, upon them, which appeared to have formed part of 
a heating-room attached to a bath.! At Bowood, between the house 
and. the lake, were once found traces of a Roman house. Calne 
could not have been a Station ow the* Roman road from London 
to Bath, because that road is nearly two miles off, and moreover, 
there was no Station upon it between Marlborough and Wans: 
nevertheless it is very likely that there was in the Roman times 
a principal residence here for some person of importance, and 
that, upon the site of the Castle House. A small town would, by 
degrees, grow up about it, as was the case at Devizes, where, when 
Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, built his fine castle, a town appears to 
have sprung up: very little, if anything, being known about any 
town having existed there before. 
The name of Calne, however, is not Roman : it is considered by 
authorities to be a purely Celtic word. We pronounce it now 
Calne (Carn), but in very old legal documents it is written Cauna: 
and in my native county—Yorkshire—I know a place spelled ex- 
actly as the name of this town is, but it begins with a B., Balne, 
invariably called Bawn. Mr. Whitaker, the historian of Manchester 
(long deceased), speaking [vol. I., 187] of a place near there 
called Colne, says that “all places of that name in Lancashire, 
Gloucestershire, and: Yorkshire, and the Calne of Wiltshire, are 
derived from an ancient Celtic word, Col-aun, meaning, in that 
language, a current of waters.”? In truth, # was the proper name 
1 An account of this is given by Mr. Robert New to Dr. John Ward, of 
Gresham College, in a letter, Ist June, 1753, preserved in the Brit. Museum, 
Addit. MSS., Vol. x., Sleane, 6211, p. 9. The inscription on the bricks is stated 
to have been I. V. C. DIGNI. 
2 See Dr. Campbell’s suggestion, Appendix No. I, 
