NEWTON MANOR. * 45 



combed with quarry workings of many centuries. On the north, 

 now separated by the railway, are water meadows, extending 

 towards Swanage town, through which meanders the little Swanago 

 river, and there are some closes of arable land, called the North 

 Fields, stretching towards the chalk down. Here, my sons tell 

 me, they get more partridges than anywhere else. There are 

 snipe about the brook at the right time of the year, and 

 occasionally a heron is to be seen, one of which, an especially 

 handsome bird, has found an abiding shrine in a glazed case in the 

 corridor. As an illustration of the little reliance to be placed on 

 the permanence of field names, I may mention that there is an 

 upland arable field on the north, which goes by the name of 

 " Wetwliistle" Being quite unable to understand why a hill-side 

 field, usually as dry as a bone, should have got such a name, I 

 asked, many years ago, an ancient labourer if he could throw any 

 light on the matter. " I can tell 'ee, you see," he said, " that 

 field were, forty or fifty years ago, old pasture, and I mind the 

 time when old farmer Beaton he broke it up into arable. It were 

 in the month of July, and powerful hot, and the men drank so 

 much of the old farmer's cider that he said ' Well, my lads, you 

 have wet your whistles this time. I shall call this field 

 Wetwhistle in future,' " and Wetwliistle it is to this day. 



Newton was for centuries the headquarters of an old Purbeck 

 family, the Cockrams of Newton, Whitecliffe, and Bucknowle, 

 which three estates remained in their possession till about 

 1830, when the last of the family. Captain John Cockram, died, 

 and the property was sold. The Cockrams were a race of 

 Purbeck gentry, bearing coat armour, the coat a canting one, the 

 charge a cock on a ram's back, and they seem to have furnished 

 quite a succession of parsons to the parish. They lived in this 

 house, and doubtless built at different times all there was of it till 

 I came into possession. It will be gathered, then, that Newton 

 is an old house, but I am afraid mainly in the same sense as was 

 the schoolboy's penknife, which was an old knife, but had a new 

 blade and a new haft. Captain John Cockram built or refaced the 



