OF SELBORNE. 617 



guished from having a tiled bouse near it 4 . Butt-wood 

 Close ; here the servants of the Priory and the village 

 swains exercised themselves with their long bows, and 

 shot at a mark against a butt, or banK 5 . Cundyth 

 [conduit] Wood : the engrosser of the lease not under- 

 standing this name has made a strange barbarous word 

 of it. Conduit Wood was and is a steep rough cow- 

 pasture, lying above the Priory, at about a quarter of 

 a mile to the south-west. In the side of this field there 

 is a spring of water that never fails ; at the head of 

 which a cistern was built which communicated with 

 leaden pipes that conveyed water to the monastery. 

 When this reservoir was first constructed does not 

 appear; we only know that it underwent a repair in the 

 episcopate of Bishop Wainfleet, about the year 1462 6 . 

 Whether these pipes only conveyed the water to the 

 Priory for common and culinary purposes, or contri- 

 buted to any matters of ornament and elegance, we 

 shall not pretend to say ; nor when artists and mecha- 

 nics first understood any thing of hydraulics, and that 

 water confined in tubes would rise to its original level. 



4 Men at first heaped sods, or fern, or heath, on their roofs to keep 

 off the inclemencies of weather : and then by degrees laid straw or 

 haum. The first refinements in roofing were shingles, which are very 

 ancient. Tiles are a very late and imperfect covering, and were not 

 much in use till the beginning of the sixteenth century. The first tiled 

 house at Nottingham was in 1503. 



[It is, perhaps, more probable that the tile house was the establishment 

 at which the tiles used in the convent flooring were made. The number 

 of plain tiles which were used there appears to have been considerable : 

 in the preparation of the ornamented ones much time must have been 

 occupied. The manufacture of them on the spot would have been quite 

 in accordance with the arrangements made by such establishments gene- 

 rally, and certainly by the Priory of Selborne, for carrying on trades 

 within themselves, and thus rendering themselves self-dependent only. 

 E. T. B.] 



5 There is also a Butt-close just at the back of the village. 



6 N. 381. " Clausure terre abbatie ecclesie parochiali de Seleburne, 

 ixs. iiiid. Reparacionibus domorum predicti prioratus iiii. lib. xis. Aque 

 conduct, ibidem, xxiiid. 



