THE COUNTRY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 13 



narrower limits than that crossed by these roads and 

 paths. It is particularly the village of Coate, his father's 

 farm of thirty or forty acres, and the neighbouring farms 

 of Day House and Snodshill ; the Reservoir and the brook 

 that runs out of it to the north, past Wanborough Nythe ; 

 Burderop Woods ; the villages of Wanborough, Liddington, 

 Badbury, Chisledon, Wroughton, Broad Hinton, Ogbourne 

 and Aldbourne, with the Downs and scattered farms be- 

 tween. This country is composed largely of the Downs, 

 running north-east and south-west from Uffington 

 ' Castle ' to Hackpen Hill. At the feet of these hills are 

 Wanborough Plain, Chisledon Plain, and similar corn-land, 

 more or less level and open, but in places cleft by almost 

 perpendicular coombes, as at Liddington and Chisledon ; 

 a wedge of this land makes a pass through the Downs, of 

 triangular shape, Liddington, Barbury, and Ogbourne 

 at the angles, Draycot Foliatt in the midst. On this 

 plain and at the edge of it, dominating much lower lands, 

 are the churches of Wanborough, Chisledon, Wroughton, 

 and Broad Hinton, and the house at Burderop. The 

 plain breaks down to the lower lands abruptly in many 

 places, as below Broad Hinton and Wroughton and 

 Burderop, and on these steeps are most of the woods — 

 Bincknoll, Quidhampton, Saltrop, and Burderop Woods. 

 At the feet of the woods the land is a fertile clay, producing 

 some of the finest grass and cattle — ' of good note in 

 Smithfield,' says Aubrey. Coate Farm, at the feet of 

 Burderop Woods, is on this clay, and the land is all 

 meadow. 



The Downs in this immediate country of Jefferies are 

 among the highest, most spacious, and most divinely 

 carved in rolling ridge and hollowed flank ; and their 

 summits commune with the finest summits in the more 

 southerly Downs — Inkpen, Martinsell, Tann Hill. Lid- 

 dington Hill and its ' castle,' a camp of a single but very 

 deep fosse, was a chief haven to Jefferies. As he took 

 deep breaths of the air about its harebell, eyebright, clover, 

 bedstraw, scabious, and fine grass, his brain was furrowed 



