ST. ALDHELM'S HEAD. Ixxiii. 



BLASHENWELL AND ITS " FINDS." 



It had been intended also to visit Blashenwell, which lies in 

 the fields on the right side of the road as one goes from Corfe to 

 Kingston ; but time did not admit of this. Hutchins gives the 

 derivation of the name as from the Anglo-Saxon " Blek," a space 

 or interruption, the spring which now rises close to the house, 

 flowing only during very wet seasons, like the Winterbournes and 

 others near Chalk hills. It was in the tufa deposited by this 

 stream in times long gone by that Mr. Clement Reid, when 

 surveying this part about 15 years ago, found a skeleton in a 

 stone-lined grave, which he said was Neolithic. Mr. Le Jeune 

 recently gave Captain Acland, for the Dorset County Museum, a 

 photo of what remains of the grave. Almost adjoining the grave 

 there is a kistvaen, from which the skull was taken in January 

 last year, and which was eventually buried in the churchyard. 

 Mr. Bulfin and Mr. Moullin took some photos of it, which are 

 now in the Museum. The kist-vaen is still in situ, and there are 

 evidences of others close by. Mr. Le Jeune exhibited photos of 

 the interment and stones. 



KINGSTON AND ITS CHURCHES. 



On climbing the steep hill into Kingston, the party repaired 

 first to the handsome and costly new church built by Lord 

 Eldon, and were here received courteously by the Vicar (the 

 Rev. S. C. Spencer Smith). When the visitors were seated in the 

 church 



The Rev. S. C. SPENCER SMITH gave a short account of the two churches. He 

 said t v at the first Lord Eldon, the great Chancellor, bought the property there 

 from Mr. Wm. Morton Pitt, and then built the old parish church of St. James. 

 The architect was George Stanley Repton, who, he believed, made a runaway 

 marriage with Lady Elizabeth Scott, daughter of the first Lord Eldon, just as he 

 before had run away with his bride, Miss Elizabeth Surtees. The church was 

 built on the site of an ancient chapel, which was said to have possessed no 

 features of interest. The voussoirs of a Norman arch, incised with shallow ens- 

 cross oruameutatiou, are now to be seen built into the outer west wall of the old 



