THE HAMPSHIRE ANTIQUARY & NATURALIST. 



54' 50" N. ; long. i24'o"W. ; height above sea, 84 feet. 

 Observers Sergt. T. Chambers, R.E., and Mr. J. T. Cook. 



* Black bulb in vacuo. 



THE HAMPSHIRE INDEPENDENT, January 4, 1890. 



" THE OLD BOOKE OF CARES-BROOKE 

 PRIORIE." 



Camden, in his " Britannia,'' after speaking of the 

 invasion of the Isle of Wight by Tostie, " Harold's 

 brother, with certaine men-ot-warre and rovers' ships 

 out of Flanders," says : " Some few years after, as 

 we read in the old booke of Cares-brooke Priorie, 

 which Master Robert Glover, Somerset, shewed me, 

 who carried as it were the sunne light oi ancient 

 Genealogies and Pedigrees in his hand. Like as, 

 saith this booke, William the Bastard conquered Eng- 

 land, even so William Fitz-Osbern his Mareschal and 

 Earle of Hereford, conquered the Isle of Wight, and 

 was the first Lord of Wight." 



Who was Master Robert Glover, Somerset ? How 

 came he possessed of " the old booke of Cares-brooke 

 Priorie " ? To whom did his effects descend ? and is 

 there any probability of the "old booke of Cares- 

 brooke friorie " being still in existence ? Camden 

 wrote in Elizabeth's time, and towards the close of 

 her reign. 



J. GROVES (Carisbrooke). 



SOME LOCAL PLACE NAMES. 



At a meeting of the Bournemouth Field Club on 



Friday, December 20, Capt. Elvves, J.P., gave an 



address on place names in that neighbourhood. 



Treating his subject from an historical point of view, 



he went back to the earliest known races in Britain, 

 and remarked that from the structure ot the 

 " barrows,'' which were frequent, it was evident that 

 the earlier inhabitants were those familiar with stone 

 implements. They were known to the Romans 

 as silures, and one of their barrows was to be seen on 

 the Christchurch-road, Bournemouth, near its junction 

 with Anerly-road. They left very little of their 

 language behind them, aud were succeeded by a race 

 of Finnish origin. The second race used bronze 

 implements, and had left behind them also many 

 barrows. Numbers of these barrows had been de- 

 stroyed in that neighbourhood, or rifled and left to 

 the ravages of the weather. Though they had a 

 language spoken, and in some degree written, of their 

 own, they had left no traces of it behind. Probably 

 some old names of places contained a " base word " 

 of that tongue. Then there came the Celtic wave 

 overspreading the West of Europe. When the Saxons 

 conquered the country these were driven out in large 

 numbers, but many survived and left traces of their 

 language after them. The name Avon, for 

 instance, was a remnant of their dialect, and the 

 Allan, which was a tributary of the Stour at Wim- 

 borne, he considered identical with the Alannus of 

 Claudius Ptolemy, writing in 120 A.D. It meant the 

 " white river," and, strange to say, the word \Vim- 

 borne came from the same source wim, white, and 

 bunt, a stream. Ringwood he thought came from 

 the Gaelic, and meant " hut wood." Redhill he 

 identified as derived from the Gaelic rhyd, a ford, and 

 hiiill, water. There were the remains of an old ford 

 there, although not now used. Twynham, the old 

 name for Christchurch, was a "telescoping," so to 

 speak, of several Gaelic words. The syllable ma in 

 Neacroft was of Gaelic origin, and often occurred in 

 the Highlands. Bournemouth itself contained a syl- 

 lable of Gaelic origin. The Saxons left many traces. 

 Take, for instance, Hinton, i.e. , a place where the hinds 

 lived, and Charlton, a place where the churls lived. 

 Southampton was originally Hampton, hence Hamp- 

 shire, as also Wilton and Wiltshire. Wallis down 

 he considered contained the elements of the word 

 Waelar, i.e., Welsh. The Romans left many traces, 

 Dorchester, &c. Throop contained the S3'llable thorp 

 or dor, from the Latin ; Musclift contained the word 

 cliffiis, an elevation, now used to denote a precipice. 



THE ANTIQUARY. 



In The Antiquary for Januar}-, 1890, there is a 

 review of Mr. Nightingale's " Church Plate of 

 the County of Dorset," with four illustrations. This 

 work appears to be a valuable addition to ecclesiastical 

 archaeology. A volume on the church-plate of 

 Wiltshire will probably follow ; and, we are 

 informed elsewhere (p. 44), the Rev. E. R. Gardiner, 

 Vicar of Fawley, and Mr. Arthur Dasent, of Ascot, 

 are cataloguing and describing that of Berkshire. 



