312 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 



barn of the said Grange, annually, where the president 

 usually superintends, attended by the bursar and steward 

 of the college. 1 



The following uncommon presentment at the court is 

 not unworthy of notice. There is on the south side of the 

 king's field (a large common-field, so called), a considerable 

 tumulus, or hillock, now covered with thorns and bushes, 

 and known by the name of Kites Hill, which is presented, 

 year by year, in court as not ploughed. Why this injunc- 

 tion is still kept up respecting this spot, which is sur- 

 rounded on all sides by arable land, may be a question 

 not easily solved, since the usage has long survived the 

 knowledge of the intention thereof. We can only suppose 

 that as the prior, besides thurset and pillory ', had also,/ -ureas, 

 a power of life and death, that he might have reserved this 

 little eminence as the place of execution for delinquents. 

 And there is the more reason to suppose so, since a spot 

 just by is called Gaily (Gallows) Hill. 



The lower part of the village, next the Grange, in 

 which is a pond and a stream, is well known by the 

 name of Gracious - street, an appellation not at all under- 

 stood. There is a lake in Surrey, near Chobham, called 

 also Gracious-pond', and another, if we mistake not, near 

 Hedleigh, in the county of Hants. This strange denomina- 

 tion we do not at all comprehend, and conclude that it 

 may be a corruption from some Saxon word, itself perhaps 

 forgotten. 



It has been observed already, that Bishop Tanner was 

 mistaken when he refers to an evidence of Dodsworth, 

 " De mercaut FERIA de Seleburne" Selborne never had a 

 chartered fair ; the present fair was set up since the year 

 1681, by a set of jovial fellows, who had found in an old 

 almanack that there had been a fair here in former days 

 on the first oi' August -, and were desirous to revive so 

 joyous a festival. Against this innovation the vicar set 



1 Owen Oglethorpe, president, &c., an. Edw. Sexti, primo [viz. 1547.] demised 

 to Robert Arden Selborne Grange for twenty years. Rent vi u . Index of Leases. 

 -[G. W.] 



