HISTORY OF BRIDPORT. 123 



members of our club who will perhaps recollect our old and valued 

 friend Mr. Barnes's suggested identification of the Londinis of the 

 anonymous Geographer of Ravenna with Bradpole, taking Londinis 

 to be a Latinised form of a British name Llyndaen, meaning, as he 

 held, broad pool, and which would be therefore the same as 

 Bradpole also broad pool ; but if this were correct the Roman 

 road would have to be sought a little further north than Bridport. 

 Dr. Stukeley says he found it north of the town. Mr. Warne, 

 however, places Londinis conjecturally at Lyme Regis. It would 

 be a matter of much interest if further researches could be made 

 to determine more certainly the position of this station and also 

 that of Canca Arixa, which the same geographer gives, and which 

 Mr. Warne suggests to be Charmouth or Bridport, but Mr. Barnes 

 considers was Exmouth, and adduces etymological reasons for so 

 considering. But whether there was any town here in Roman 

 days or not, Bridport is no new place ; it was probably of some 

 antiquity at the date of Domesday Book, as it is therein named as 

 having had 1 20 houses in the time of Edward the Confessor. It 

 was in no very flourishing state, however, at the time of the 

 Conqueror, for Domesday Book goes on to say that " there are now 

 there one hundred houses" (or as Mr. Warne gives it 105), "and 

 twenty are in such a miserable condition" ( l ita destitute ') "that 

 they who dwell in them cannot pay the geld." It does not 

 appear whether at that date there had been any beginning of the 

 staple trade for which the place has been known for centuries, 

 but within 150 years thereafter it must have been well established, 

 as will be shown hereafter. 



There are many records of, and relating to, the town in after 

 years, but no further description of it that I am aware of extant 

 till the 16th and 17th centuries, when mention of it occurs in the 

 pages of Holinshed, Camden, and Leland. Leland, who died in 

 1552, but whose Itinerary was published in the latter part of the 

 next century, writes "Britport, of sum written Bruteport, is a fair 

 larg town, and the cheif streat of it lyith in length from West to 

 Est ; ther crosse another fair strete in inidle of it, into the South." 



