282 The History of Longleat. 
long and broad, as descriptive of the valley in which the house 
is situated. But to this explanation there are fair objections. 
First; adjectives, as we have been always taught to believe, are 
feeble parts of speech which cannot stand by themselves, but require 
something to lean upon. In the name of a place you always expect 
to find a noun substantive, either simple or in composition: as 
Warminster, anciently Wereminster, (the church on the Were 
rivulet), Bradford, Trowbridge, and the like. 
In the next place, if “Zongalata’”’ was the proper Latin name, 
how does it happen that it never occurs in any of the old Latin 
documents connected with Longleat? On the contrary, whenever 
the Latin name is used, as in a deed of 25 Edw. I.! the word is 
Longa-/eta: and the derivation which to myself appears, without 
any doubt, the true one, is this. The word /eat is an old noun, 
from the Saxon verb to lead, and signifies a watercourse or aqueduct. 
There is near Plymouth an artificial channel of this kind, a cele- 
brated piece of engineering made by Sir Francis Drake for supplying 
that town with water, which bears the name of The Leat. The word 
also occurs in old Acts of Parliament: In Scotland a mill-stream 
used to be called a mill-/eat?. The changes here haye been so 
great that it is of course difficult to say what may have been in 
ancient times, but it is most likely that the stream from Hornings- 
ham, which supplies the present lake, was originally used by 
some channel, for turning a mill. The late Mr. Davis, steward of 
this property, used to say that he believed there had once been 
a mill near the site of the house. [The Marquis of Bath here 
stated that this was the case; and that it stood near the old stables, 
close to the house}. His lordship’s testimony came in very happily 
for the purpose: corroborating, without further question, this origin 
of the name.’ 
1 Prynne, p. 710, 
2 Lade is a Scotch word for a mill-race or trench: and Baillie gives mzllead 
and milleat as used in the same sense. ade also signified the mouth of a 
stream. At Lechlade, in Gloucestershire, the little stream called the Leach, 
discharges itself into the Isis. So also Crick-lade. Near Nismes in France 
there is the Mill of Langlade: a close approximation to the Mill of Long-leat. 
3 The Mill is marked upon an old folio plan of the gardens and plantations by 
H. Hulsbergh. 
