30 On the History of Chippenham. 
2. Rownon, South-west of Chippenham. 
Rowdon lies on what was formerly a down, (the old name was 
Rughdon, probably meaning rough down), and is traversed by the 
road to Bath. Upon the principal estate there is an old mansion, 
now a farm-house, close to the Avon. It bears marks of having 
seen better days, when it was the residence of families influential 
in this town; and it was once the scene of a little military exploit. 
The oldest document I have seen relating to it, is (if correctly 
interpreted), a curious one. King Richard I. about the year 1190, 
charges Rowdon with £7 10s. a year, as a provision for life to a 
person described in the Latin document as “ Hodierna Nutrix,” a 
name which seems to admit of but one translation, “‘ Hodierna the 
Nurse.” The name of Odierne is still attached to a parish in 
South Wilts, Knoyle Odierne or West Knoyle, in the Hundred of 
Mere; and Sir R. C. Hoare, in his account of that parish, p. 38, gives 
authority to show that lands also at Knoyle belonged to this very 
Hodierna the Nurse; but who she was, he says he never could find 
out. A simple solution of the difficulty may perhaps be, that she 
had been nurse to the king himself; chief controller of the juvenile 
department of Queen Eleanor’s household, when Coeur de Lion 
was in his long-clothes. It is certainly a tradition in Wiltshire 
that his brother, King John, was christened in the font of Preshute 
Church, close to Marlborough; and it used formerly to be said that 
Richard himself was born at Fasterne, near Wotton Basset, one of 
the royal hunting seats. Be this as it may, he must, like any body 
else, have required in the early stage of his life, those peculiar atten- 
tions which none but a nurse can render; and possibly Queen Eleanor 
may have sent to Chippenham for that important domestic: but 
whoever nurse Hodierne was, and wherever she came from, she was 
rewarded for her services with part of the rents of the king’s estate 
at Rowdon. Such manner of provision was common enough. We 
have already seen that Edward the Confessor pensioned an old 
huntsman, with part (probably the same part,) of this parish ; and 
many other similar cases might be produced. Nothing is more 
likely, than that Richard, being rather short of ready money in the 
days of the Crusades, adopted this way of making his old nurse 
