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By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath. 259 
England, did make a very considerable bend at this place. And I 
therefore imagine the name to mean “ the village at the turn of the 
road.” 
Two other derivations have been suggested, one by the late Canon 
Rich-Jones, who considered the name to be the same as Cheverell, 
and believed the latter to come from the Welsh ga/r, a goat, and 
all, which in Irish and Gaelic means a cliff. Concerning which I 
will only say that it seems to me somewhat far-fetched. For the 
other derivation Mr. Flavell Edmunds is responsible: he thinks it 
to be a contracted form of Cherry-hill, and to indicate what was at 
some time or other, he supposes, the staple production of the village. 
But if so, it is strange that this old cherry forest should so entirely 
have disappeared. The cedars of Lebanon wave still where did their 
predecessors in the days of Solomon; and from Corinth still come 
the same minute grapes which took their name from that ancient 
city—I know not how many centuriesago. But in Cherhill I could 
count on the fingers of one hand the number of cherry trees now 
existing, and, I had almost said, I could put into my pockets all 
their produce. 
The earliest possessor of the manor of Cherhill of whom I can 
find record is a gentleman of the name of Fitz John, or Fitz Geffry, 
who is returned in a report made to King Henry III. in 1264 as 
holding it ix capite for one knight’s fee, with 227 acres of land. In 
the following reign it appears to have passed by a female descent 
into the hands of the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick, with whom 
it remained for two centuries. Subsequently the Roaches, of 
Bromham, and the very ancient Gloucestershire family of the St. 
Amands seem to have held property here, whence the coat of arms 
seen by Aubrey about 1660. Whether, however, they held the 
manor or not I cannot say, for the Grubbes, of Eastwell, who were 
in possession of it at the beginning of the present century, are stated 
to have received it direct from the Crown, and one of this name— 
“John Grubb, gent.’’—occurs in a list of Wiltshire gentry as 
resident at “ Cherrell ” in the time of Charles I. The last owner 
of this family, Mr. William Hunt-Grubbe, who died in 1820, left it 
to be divided between his four younger children, and it was sold 
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