JANUARY 



Jan. y I ^HERE are few records more interesting, 

 2. A to my mind, than those dealing with the 

 history of the place in which one lives. 



The documentary history of this parish goes 

 back very far, for we learn that a portion of 

 it belonged to the monastery of Abingdon in the 

 seventh century. Ceadwalla, the monkish King of 

 Wessex, granted property here to the monastery in 

 A.D. 686, and the grant was confirmed by Cenwulf, 

 King of Mercia, in A.D. 821. Tradition tells of a 

 temporary or a summer camp here in Roman days. 

 The high ridge between two valleys was admirably 

 suited to such a position for surveying purposes, 

 commanding the country westward beyond Marl- 

 borough, and on the north and east almost as far. 

 It is easy to weave a pretty story round a silver 

 coin of the Republic, B.C. circa 217, which was dug 

 up in a field just below the camp some thirty or 

 forty years since. It is a coin common enough 

 with collectors, but is the only one of its kind 

 ever found in England, and it is probable that it 

 was brought over by a Roman soldier during the 

 Occupation as a keepsake, and lost by him in the 

 meadow where it was so many centuries later found. 

 There may have been much wailing and heart- 



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