4 A FARMER'S YEAR 



The name of it is the Moat Farm, but whether it is so called 

 from a large pond in the meadow in front of the house, or because 

 it was once a ' Mote ' or meeting place, a gathering-ground perhaps 

 of long-forgotten parish councils, is more than I can say. The 

 origin of the name of the village itself — Bedingham — gives food for 

 conjecture. Blomefield informs us that it is derived from a rivulet 

 in Sussex called the Beding ; but why a village in Norfolk should 

 take its title from a streamlet in Sussex he does not explain. If 

 he be right, the christening took place some time ago, for the 

 ' town ' seems to have been called Bedingham in the days of 

 William the Conqueror, who owned the greater part of it, which 

 was in the charge of his steward, one Godric. Quite close also, 

 in the neighbouring village of Hedenham, the Romans had a brick 

 kiln ; there is one there still, so probably they were acquainted 

 with Bedingham. 



There are few things which give rise to reflections more melan- 

 choly—since the fate of those bygone worthies who owned it is 

 the same that awaits us all— than the contemplation of any piece of 

 ground to which we chance to be attached and to see and walk 

 upon day by day. We may know its recent history, traditions 

 may even survive of old So-and-so, and how he farmed 'sixty 

 years gone ' ; but before that ! How many generations of them 

 have taken exactly the same interest in those identical fields? 

 How many dead eyes week by week, as ours do, have dwelt upon the 

 swell of yonder rise, or the dip of the little valley ? How many 

 dead hands have tilled that fallow, or mown that pasture ? 



Look at the long procession of them — savages herding battle 

 and hogs, scores of generations of these ; slaves under the charge of 

 a Roman overseer ; Saxons, Danes, Normans, monks, English of all 

 the dynasties, our immediate predecessors, and, last of all, ourselves. 



And the land itself ? Scarcely changed, as I believe. Any por- 

 tion of it that chanced to be forest in his day excepted, the Saxon 

 Thane, Hagan, who farmed it in the time of Edward the Con- 

 fessor, would know it again at once, for every little rise and fall of 

 it is the same as in his generation ; the streamlet is the same, the 



