1 8 A FARMER'S YEAR 



name of the place, since down on the ' Dam ' are many ditches, 

 and doubtless it was from some ancient dyke, cut in an age when 

 dykes were few, that the village was christened Ditchingham, or 

 the Hamlet of the Ditch. Not that the parish is all low land ; on 

 the contrary, most of it is high. For instance, here where I 

 live the wells are over ninety feet deep, at which depth in some 

 dim age the sea once rolled. This I know, for when a few years 

 since I was engaged in cleaning out a disused well, and in order 

 to do this effectually caused it to be deepened by a few feet, we 

 came upon sea sand containing thousands of shells, all of them 

 common and familiar to us to-day. It was curious to look at them 

 and wonder how many ages had gone by since they were washed 

 to the lip of the tide and left there by the retreating waves. 

 Very many, I suppose, for ninety feet of clay and other substances 

 take a long time to deposit. But whenever it was, the climate 

 was the climate of England as we know it, for had it been either 

 tropical or arctic the shells would have differed in character. 



From the northern part of the parish there is a gradual fall of 

 the ground, till the level of the marshes is reached at its southern 

 end. To the south-west however lies the great feature and beauty of 

 the village, the lofty bank or incline known as the Bath Hills, and 

 in more ancient times as the Earl's Vineyard, a slope eighty or 

 ninety feet high, which without doubt was once the bank of an 

 inland fiord or tidal water. Now the space beneath is drained by 

 the gentle winding Waveney, beyond whose stream lies a wide 

 expanse of 400 acres of pasturage and gorse known as Outney, or 

 Bungay Common. On the opposing slopes above the Waveney, 

 which encircles this common, lie Stow Park, once a home of the 

 King's deer, and the wooded fields of Earsham, while to the 

 south appear the red roofs of Bungay. I have travelled a great 

 way about the world in my time and studied much scenery, but I 

 do not remember anything more quietly and consistently beautiful 

 than this view over Bungay Common seen from the Earl's Vineyard, 

 or, indeed, from any point of vantage on its encircling hills. For 

 the most part of the year the plain below is golden with gorse, but it 



