52 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



London side of the pleasant town of Calne was to be 

 met with the anything but pleasant Cherhill gang — 

 a goodly company of footpads who, in mail-coach 

 days, stuck at nothing. 



A former Yicar of Cherhill tells* of the defence, at 

 the assizes, of an alleged highwayman (possibly one 

 of the Cherhill men) by the late Mr. Henry 

 Merewether, who was so successful in his address 

 that his client was acquitted, and left the court with a 

 character altogether spotless. The same night, on 

 the way home, Mr. Merewether was stopped on the 

 downs ; timel}' help arrived, the freebooter was 

 arrested, and found to be the lawyer's client of the 

 morning. 



But although the Waggon and Horses at Beck- 

 hampton was a familiar sight to travellers by the 

 Bath road, the true Beckhampton Inn — twenty-six 

 miles from Bath, where, I take it, passengers by the 

 down night mails snatched, soon after five a.m., a very 

 early breakfast, as an earnest of better things at Bath 

 or Bristol — still stands, but it is in private occupation. 



Less than a mile ~^^^^ of the famous barrow or 

 n c/ mound — one hundred and seventy feet high, and in 

 diameter five hundred feet at the base, and more than 

 a hundred at the top — known as Silbury Hill, will be 

 found, at the junction of the Calne and Devizes 

 roads, a sul)stantial square-built house of two stories 

 and fourteen front windows. It has its principal 

 face towards the former road. With a central porch,. 



* ' Cherhill Gleanings,' Eev. W. C. Plenderleath, M.A. 



.V 



