120 The Early History of the Upper Wylye Valley. 



Stockton of the 13th ; Sutton (St. Leonard's) was re-built in the 

 13th; Codford St. Peter and Brixton have 13th century work, but 

 there are traces of older work in both ; Norton has work of the 

 early or middle of the 14th century; Kingston, of the 14th; 

 Bishopstrow, as now existing, of the middle of the 15th, and this, 

 as we saw, may have been an old foundation then. 



There are two churches of which the foundation presents some 

 points of interest, Hill Deverill and Longbridge. Hill was the 

 subject of dispute soon after its foundation. The Osmund Eegister 

 I. 349 — 351) gives a deed of Elyas Giffard, of which the date is 

 1130 — 1135, in which he certifies to the Bishop of Sarum his gift 

 of the Church of Hill to Heytesbury, founded " in feudo Walteri 

 militis mei, eodem Waltero concedente." We get further details 

 in a document of the date 1156 to 1160. The two disputants were 

 the aforesaid Walter and Canon Roger, founder of the Prebendal 

 Church at Heytesbury. The ordinary chairman would have been 

 Azo, the Archdeacon of Sarum, Roger's brother; but Walter 

 " suspected " Azo, and the Bishop therefore, to satisfy all parties, 

 appointed Adelelm, the Archdeacon of Dorset, to act. The case 

 was argued in St. Peter's Church, at Glaston Deverill (Longbridge ), 

 before a rural chapter of the deanery. Canon Roger argued that 

 the Church belonged to his prebend, while Walter argued that it 

 had never so belonged. The judgment was in favour of Roger, and 

 Elyas Giffard therefore drew up his deed forbidding the aforesaid 

 Walter or his heirs from raising any vexatious controversy against 

 Heytesbury Church in the matter. So the church formed a prebend 

 in the Collegiate church of Heytesbury till the Act of 1839 abolished 

 the prebends there. 1 



The notice in this document is valuable, because it confirms Mr. 

 Ponting's date of the earliest architecture in Longbridge Church 

 as being 1130 — 1150, and because there is an oral tradition, still 



1 Two of the prebends in this Church, Tytheringfcon and Horningsham, 

 were united before 1400, and then separated again, and named with subtle 

 discrimination, one, " The prebend of Tytherington cum Horningsham," the 

 other, " The prebend of Horningsham cum Tytherington." Hoare, Hundred 

 of Heytesbury, 305. 



