68 Ancient Wiltshire Customs. 
On Certain Ancient Wiltshire Customs. 
1—THE CUCKING STOOL, 
AT 
WOOTTON BASSET. 
This by-gone terror of the unruly-tongued fair one, remained in 
good preservation, till within these forty years, at Wootton Basset, 
and the pair of wheels on which the machine ran, with the arm 
chair in which the scolds received their immersions, are still to be 
seen in a loft, over the Town Hall of that place. 
The machine when complete consisted of a chair, a pair of wheels, 
two long poles for shafts, and a rope attached to each shaft, at about 
a foot from the end of it. 
The person to be ducked was tied into the chair and the machine 
pushed into a pond, called the Weir-pond, (which is now filled up,) 
and the shafts being let go, the scold was tipped backwards into 
the water, the shafts flying up, and being recovered again by means 
of the ropes attached to them. The chair is an oak arm chair with 
the date 1668 carved on the back of it, and the wheels are similar 
to those of a small cart, and are three fect three inches in diameter. 
When I was at Wootton Basset some ten years ago, I was in- 
troduced to a lady named Cripps, whose brother had been mayor 
of the town, and who remembered the different parts of the Cuck- 
ing Stool in a perfect state, and by her I was favoured with the 
drawing of the Cucking Stool at Wootton Basset, which I send 
herewith. 
With respect to the law on the subject of scolds :—Sir William 
Russell in his work on Crimes and Misdemeanors, one of the best 
text-books on our criminal law, says (in the last edition by Mr. 
Greaves, Q. C., published in 1848, vol. 1. p. 327,) “A common scold, 
