2 PARISH AND CHURCH OF PIDDLETRENTHIDE. 



This parish or Manoir, in jElfgifu's native tongue the 

 Queen presented, with a number of others, to the Benedictine 

 monastery founded at Winchester by Eadward the Elder, 

 afterwards famous as Hyde Abbey. 



Piddletrenthide is situated near the summit of the great 

 central chalk highlands of Dorset, two or three miles to the 

 south of the greensand outcrop and the mighty escarpment 

 which overlooks Blackmore Vale and Somerset. The village 

 proper stands upon the hard Middle Chalk (our worthy sexton 

 wishes it didn't), and the characteristic fossil, Inoceramus 

 myteloides, is not infrequently found there. Its altitude above 

 sea-level ranges from 286 feet at the lowest point of the valley 

 to 700 feet on the eastern, and 780 feet on the western spurs of 

 the Upper Chalk. 



The dwellers on these uplands may, I think, be reckoned as 

 being descendants of the oldest surviving race in Britain. 

 There appears to be every likelihood of our having amongst us 

 an unbroken strain of Welsh blood, undisturbed by such 

 vicissitudes as have befallen the Celtic families of W T est and 

 North Wales. For the Dorset chalk was never subjected to an 

 English hostile invasion ; the tide of battle in the sixth century, 

 deflected by the impassable fens and thickets of the Stour and 

 the Frome, flowed northwards before it turned westwards, 

 compassing Selwood and fighting its way through the vales of 

 " Blackmoor" and Taunton into Devon. 



In early times our quite treeless downs offered on their 

 well-grassed slopes and rich valleys the most highly-prized 

 accommodation to a people of pastoral pursuits ; and to-day 

 they abound in evidences of having supported a crowded and 

 industrious Celtic population. A mile or so to the north 

 immense works, divided by mounds and ditches into rectangular 

 enclosures, crown the hills above Plush, forming what must have 

 been an impregnable camp of refuge for hundreds of families 

 with their flocks and herds. Southwards, at Piddlehinton (the 

 hin tun, the " lower Piddle village," as the name implies), is a 

 similar but unfortified kraal in the bed of the valley, besides 



