Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 637 



part of the Stonehenge structure." He says that so far as he could 

 ascertain "no one who has written about the stone has ever seen it." 

 It is difficult to find and " lies in the bend of the river, rather less than 

 a quarter of a mile below Watergate House, Bulford, under water, 

 about 5ft. from the south bank." 



No Man's Laud. A Village History, by H M Livens. 



This is a series of four articles in The Salisbury Times, August 12th 

 and 19th, Sept. 2nd and 9th. The author gives to some extent, in their 

 own words (and what is more in their actual words, and not in the 

 ordinary literary-dialect jargon) such reminiscences, trivial or otherwise, 

 as he has been able to glean from the oldest inhabitants of a place 

 which has no written history whatever. The result is a well-written 

 and very interesting gossip on all sorts of matters connected with the 

 conditions of life which formerly existed in an extremely out-of-the-way 

 corner of S. Wilts. 



No Man's Land, now a parish in itself, but formerly an extra-parochial 

 district largely waste land on the edge of the New Forest, and on the 

 borders of Hants and Wilts, was first inhabited about the middle of the 

 eighteenth century by a gipsy named Willett, or according to another 

 tradition by one John Shergold, who was quickly joined by eleven 

 other settlers, and the village was founded. At present the population 

 is 256. The village, with the exception of one cottage, lies in Wiltshire, 

 but "the two paving stones outside the door of the Lamb Inn are in 

 Hants." " Many of the older cottages are built with mud, or rather 

 clay, walls, and thatched roofs. Formerly this was the case throughout. 

 Although this method of building has completely died out, it never- 

 theless had its good points. . . . The first requisite was a bed of 

 fairly stiff clay . . . mixed with chopped heath. . . . The 

 clay was first of all puddled into a consistent mass by being well 

 trodden by men and boys, or sometimes by a donkey, and then rammed 

 well down between temporary wall-boards. When a foot or so in height 

 had been thus laid it was left to dry, the boards being shifted up and 

 another layer added when it was firm enough to bear it. When thus 

 carefully built, thatched, and whitewashed, a mud cottage with walls 

 from eighteen inches to two feet thick, was more snug and waterproof 

 than an ordinary brick one, besides costing far less to erect and looking 

 much more comely in the end. Some of the older houses have weathered 

 not less than a hundred and ififty winters." " The most primitive 

 method, however, of domestic architecture, in this neighbourhood, and 

 now quite obsolete, unless, perhaps, as a temporary shelter for a charcoal 

 burner, is the " Clotten House," that is, a cabin made of clods, or sods. 

 This was the earliest form of some of the village homes." 



Of prehistoric matters the author has little to say. A polished stone 

 celt was found in 1908 at Dazell, a hamlet half-a-mile away, and there 

 is a barrow and possibly an entrenchment on Eisbury. 



Of children's games the following are noted : — " Bandish " (bandy, or 

 hockey); "Christened Beast," a' game played in parties from trees as 

 bases; " Dreaden Grammer's Needle"; "Juggle Cat" (tipcat); and 

 " Burn-ball," in which the player hit the ball which was served to him 

 with his hand ' 



