266 Cherhill Gleanings. 
I made a plan of Cherhill Churchyard and took copies of all the 
inscriptions upon the one hundred and thirty-nine tombstones therein 
contained, so far as it was possible to decypher them—and a very 
interesting work it was. Sometimes I found an inscription which 
seemed at first sight almost absolutely illegible, but of which, by 
first writing down the few letters that I could make out, and then 
gradually filling in the gaps, I was eventually able to recover the 
whole. In other cases I have been quite unable to master an in- 
scription in the ordinary light of an English day, but if by chance 
that rare visitant—the sun—came out, the whole inscription has 
come out too. And then in the case of a stone so placed that the 
sunlight could not fall upon it, I have been able to obtain the same 
help by reflecting the rays upon the inscription with a mirror. In 
other cases, again, I have returned to my work after nightfall with 
a small bulls-eye lantern, and have thus been able to fill up gaps 
which, with all my care, I had been obliged to leave in the daylight 
transcript. Nor did I ever hear it reported in consequence in the 
village that a ghost had been observed to be haunting the chureh- 
yard. Sometimes a rubbing on of chalk has helped me, and 
sometimes a rubbing off with heelball. And I am quite sure that 
I have obtained in this way, and preserved in my book, some in- 
scriptions which in twenty or thirty years’ time will have become 
totally illegible, and a great many which will be so in a hundred 
years’ time. 
And now from the churchyard we pass to the large barn which 
stands close to it on the south side, and which was, I presume, a 
tithe barn. This is 11]1ft. long by 354ft. wide in external measure- 
ment, and was formerly the largest entirely wooden barn (so far as 
I am aware) in the county. It is built in the form of a parallelogram, 
broken by four large stone porches, two on each side, which may, 
indeed, almost be described as forming transepts. The interior 
consists of seven bays, and is divided into a nave and aisles by a 
row of large posts standing upon masonry bases, and running up 
to the purlines of the roof. Across these came the collar beams, 
and above again, smaller collar beams, with king posts between the 
two, Supporting the lower collars are strong curved braces, and 
