CORSHAM REGIS 



221 



Corsham, to which Pickwick belongs, is one of those 

 places which it would be almost an indignity to call a 

 " village," while to name it a " town " would be to 

 give too great an importance to it. It is Corsham 

 " Regis," by virtue of having been a residence of the 

 Saxon Kings ; but the Great Western has docked the 

 kingly suffix, and if you were to ask at Paddington 

 for a ticket to Corsham Regis, it is to be feared that 

 the booking-clerk would not recognize the place under 

 its full name. 



The townlet is a pleasing one, and, always excepting 

 the new and ugly stone villas recently built, it abounds 



THE HUNGERFORD ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM REGIS. 



with delightful specimens of domestic architecture of 

 the sixteenth, seventeenth, and mid-eighteenth cen- 

 turies ; fine houses built of Corsham stone in a 

 dignified Renaissance manner, or in the earlier 

 Tudor convention of gables and mullioned windows. 

 C^orsham Court, the finest of all, standing in its 



