174 Calne. 
small a surprise as that, some elaborate machinery must first have 
been established below. How could you contrive to let a whole 
floor down at once without some very great preparation beforehand ? 
That preparation would have to be made by the carpenters and 
blacksmiths of Calne; and if the carpenters and blacksmiths at 
Calne in A.D. 978 could carry out such a nice little affair on the 
sly, without its being talked of all over the town, the workmen of 
A.D. 978 must have had more control over their tongues than their 
brethren have now-a-days. 
The break-down could be nothing but an accident from over- 
weighting an old floor. I have, from time to time, observed in the 
newspapers of the day the very same thing happening, and, oddly 
enough, in more than one case, the chairman escaped without hurt. 
In 1883, at Rockwell Green, near Wellington, in Somersetshire, in 
an upper room converted into a temperance hall, the centre of the 
floor gave way, and about one hundred persons were precipitated 
into the room below. The chairman and a friend occupied a platform 
at the end of the room furthest from the door, and remained unhurt. 
In 1870, at Richmond, in Virginia, there was a most appalling 
disaster. The election of a mayor was going on, and the congress- 
room, not a very large one, was closely packed with more than 
three hundred persons. The judge’s bench was ona raised platform 
or ledge at one end, and just as the two judges had entered the room 
and taken up their seats a crackling noise of small timbers was 
heard, and the floor went down into the room below. Fifty-eight 
people were killed and above a hundred wounded, but the ledge, 
about 12ft. wide, on which the judges sat, did not go down, and on 
this they were saved. The very same thing happened at Ruan, in 
Cornwall, in the year 1864. At a petty sessions the floer fell in, 
with the exception of about 6ft. barricaded off for the use of the 
bench and officials. The whole body of the people, about two 
hundred in number, were pitched into a cellar beneath: but the 
magistrates escaped. 
At Glastonbury, many years ago, was a very old inn that had 
belonged to the monastery. It stood where a modern one called 
the White Hart now does, It was in a very decayed condition, 
