78 Kington St. Michael. [_Lower Easton Percy. 



heads, and its angles being flanked by bold buttresses witb a sub- 

 stantial moulding running all round, about a yard from the 

 ground, the wing looks not unlike a chapel ; but it was the original 

 hall. The room is paved with freestone, in lozenge. It was once 

 wainscotted with carved oak panel : and a few relics of better days, 

 such as stag's antlers, &c., still linger on the walls, as if to declare 

 that it was not always filled with piles of sacks, cider-presses, and 

 other farm house gear, as it is now. The whole house indeed, is one 

 of the many warnings which every county, not omitting "Wiltshire, 

 presents, of the " base uses " that await a goodly residence. For 

 such is its loneliness and perilous state of dilapidation, that it seems 

 to want but one thing more, which is, to be fixed upon as the scene 

 of a tragical legend or ghost story. It is very little known, and if 

 any reader, on mysterious fiction bent, will select a gloomy day, or 

 visit it at nightfall, he wiU be grateful for the suggestion. Yet the 

 situation is one of the best in the neighbourhood, and the views 

 (did the dense screen of trees permit any) extensive ; northward 

 over Stanton Park and Leigh Dclamere; on the south, across a 

 prettily wooded lawn to Lower Easton in the foreground, and the 

 Calne Hills in the distance. Aubrey mentions that " Herons bred 

 here in 1580 before the great oaks were felled down near the 



Manor House." 



Lower Easton PePvCY. 



"When Thomas Lyte sold the Manor in 1575 to Mr. Snell, he 

 retained part of it, and built a house on the brow of the hill above 

 the brook, facing south east.' In that house (afterwards destroyed) 

 John Aubrey was born.*^ He was of the younger branch of the 

 Aubreys of Llantrithyd in Glamorganshire, but his father Richard, 

 of Broad Chalk in South "Wilts, having married Deborah grand- 

 daughter of Thomas Lyte of Easton Piers, John Aubrey succeeded 

 to this Farm as his mother's inheritance. The Lytes were brought 

 hither from Somersetshire by the Yeoviltons, and may have been 



1 The sloping ground in front now called "Boxxnds" formerly "Brown's Hill," 

 is mentioned by Aubrey as opposite the hoiise in which he was born. (N. II. of 

 Wilts, p. 49.) 



2 A mcmoii- of him wiU be found in a later page. 



I 



