ST. .^LDHELM'S HEAD. Ixxi. 



superincumbent weight of the stonework, but let it press, partially at any rate, 

 upon the stone lintels of the recesses.) These recesses, continued Mr. Le Jeune, 

 led him to suggest a few years ago that this small building was a lazar-house, or 

 leper hospital, and that the recesses were intended for the reception of the 

 charitable gifts of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood the two upper ones foi 

 the reception of food, which would there be out of the reach of dogs or other 

 marauding animals, and the six lower ones for the reception of fuel, garments, 

 and other things not likely to be touched by animals. When the charitable had 

 brought their gifts and deposited them in the recesses they withdrew, and there- 

 upon the lepers, who were forbidden to associate with the healthy for fear of 

 communicating the contagion, came out and took the welcome goods. 



Mr. Le Jeune added a few words about the probable derivation of the word 

 " Scoles." As part originally of the Manor of Kingston, which belonged to the 

 Abbey of Shaftesbury, it is said to have been granted by tie Abbess to the 

 Scoville family, in which case "Scoles" would most likely be a contraction of 

 " Scovilles." But Mr. Le Jeune now suggested a new idea. In Scotland the 

 word " scowl " denotes a hut, and he suggested that the lepers may have lived in 

 huts, and that thus the name came to be applied to the place. 



The Eev. R. Grosvenor Bartelot, Vicar of Fordington St. George, who while 

 Curate of Corfe Castle was a diligent student of the antiquities of the neighbour- 

 hood, had promised to give some particulars about Robert Dackombe, of Scowles, 

 by whom the present house is generally supposed to have been built. He was 

 unable to be present owing to having to conduct a funeral, but had sent the 

 following short paper, which was read : 



"I fear that I must use this opportunity to rebut strongly two of the oft- 

 reiterated inexactitudes of which Robert Dackombe, of Scoles, has been the 

 subject. I am indebted to Mr. J. Dacombe, of Bournemouth, for valuable notes 

 on the family. First, I am certain that he was not the builder of this miniature 

 Jacobean mansion, as has been so often stated. Secondly, I am convinced that 

 not only did he not die in the year 1651, as is stated in Hutchins, the Purbeck 

 Society's papers, and elsewhere, but that he was alive at least a dozen years later, 

 and did not die till after the Restoration of Charles II. Let me then describe 

 Robert Dackombe, so far as I have been able to unearth anything about him, as 

 having been one of those ' son and heirs ' of a distinguished father, who live and 

 die without leaving any mark on the generation in which they live. He certainly 

 lived through a stirring historic period. From his windows here he must have 

 seen the sieges of Corfe Castle and heard the cannons roar. But while his 

 brother Bruen Dackombe, of Corfe Manor House, lived the life of a roystering 

 Cavalier, paying dearly for his loyalty by donations and fines, which almost 

 ruined the ancestral estates, Robert lived here in his homely bower, looked after 

 the farming of his little estate, superintended the brewing of his nut-brown ale, 

 and saw to the racking of his ' blue vinney ' cheese. He cared nothing for 

 politics. He might easily have asserted his hereditary right to represent this 

 pocket borough in Parliament, or have occupied the mayoral chair, as his father 



