111. VALLEY OF PYDEL AND BUCKLAND NEWTON. 



(833-857) to the Abbey of Glastonbury. The late Canon C. W. Bingham told 

 him that the word "Plis" meant a coomb or dell, but he did not know what 

 authority he had for this derivation. In the year 851 a great Danish invasion 

 took place, and, if Nettlecomb Tout and the Koman fosse at Plush could speak, 

 they would probably tell some stirring stories of those terrible times. Ethelwolf 

 was the father of Alfred, whose tower forms a striking object from Nettlecomb. 

 The grant was made to Glastonbury a century before the extermination of 

 wolves, which must have had a goodly run in the Forest of Blackmore adjoining 

 Plush. The roedeer are still to be seen wild in this district, and are on the 

 increase. They peep their heads occasionally from the coppice opposite the new 

 church. The old chapel was built on a very picturesque knoll about three- 

 quarters of a mile to the north of the present building and about the same 

 distance from Monkwood Hill, where the name reminds one of the connection 

 with Glastonbury. In the return in the Commission of 1650 the church was 

 described as a chapel of ease to Buckland, three miles distant. Plush then 

 contained 32 families and desired to be made a parish. Mr. Guilliam, the curate, 

 led a very disorderly life. His salary was 14 per annum and " other unlawful 

 advantages." The tithes of this tithing were 35 per annum. In the old church 

 more than half a century ago the Eev. William Butler, better known as Parson 

 Billy Butler, was cautioned not to enter the pulpit to preach, or he would disturb 

 a hen that was sitting there. The late Lord Digby told him this, and he had it 

 from Mr. Butler himself. The building, having fallen into decay, was pulled 

 down in 1847, and the materials were worked into the new church, which was 

 built nearer the hamlet and opened in 1848. The ancient carved stone font 

 narrowly escaped disappearing altogether. The Rev. Canon Bingham had a 

 great affection for it. It was now placed unrestored in the new building. Plush 

 abounds in antiquities. On the left, as one enters the village from Dorchester, 

 are to be seen lynchets or terraces, made in all probability so that the slopes 

 might be cultivated. Tumuli and pit-dwellings are plentiful on the downs. The 

 Roman fosse is clearly marked, and Nettlecomb Tout has much of its Celtic 

 earthwork remaining. On Whatcombe Down, between Buckland and Plush, is 

 a small Roman camp of observation commanding a view across the county from 

 north to south, also the site of an ancient British village. In 1872 seven British 

 urns were found by the late Mr. C. Miller in a barrow on the down between 

 Plush and Liscombe only about three feet below the surface. Alas for Dorset, 

 that the new Museum was not then in existence ! Dr. Rolliston, of Oxford, took 

 charge of these interesting remains and placed them in the Ashmolean Museum. 

 Mr. A. J. Evans, the present keeper of the Oxford Museum, says that these urns 

 evidently contained cremated remains. Calcined bones were still in one. The 

 urns are of rude British fabric, three of them fragmentary, with a rough indented 

 herring-bone pattern. In 1879 Mr. Cunnington found under an immense cairn 

 in a Plush barrow an urn of dark imperfectly -burnt ware, about nine inches high 

 and nine iuches broad, with faint rudiments of plain points round it and two out 

 of probably four small knobs inside. 



