By J. U. Powell, 31. A. 



127 



To this time we may probably refer the traces of old cultivation 

 and pennings among the downs. There are many traces of mediaeval 

 agriculture, probably of the 14th century, and cattle pennings 

 noticeable in the broken hill-country behind Longbridge, Brixton, 

 and Sutton. Light land was plentiful, and after one portion was 

 worked out, another was ploughed up, and the whole manor was 

 worked like a co-operative farm. 



Other early place-names are preserved in common talk, and not 

 elsewhere. Sometimes their reason is plain, sometimes not. Why 

 was a cottage or two, that stood at Hill Deverill, in the meadows 

 away from the village, on the old pathway to Brixton, called 

 Eehoboth ? The word means " room " or " space " (Genesis, xxvi., 22). 

 It is found as a place-name at Warminster, where it is away from 

 the town, and at Dublin, where it is towards the country, and in 

 all three cases it is near a river ; perhaps the idea was taken from 

 Genesis, xxxvi., 37, " Eehoboth by the river." 



Other names are puzzling. The so-called "Jews' wall," at Long- 

 bridge, is the remains of the wall of the yard that adjoined the 

 house built by one of the Thynnes, near the church, and standing 

 certainly up till 1660. Local legend tells, of course, of a Jew who 

 was found murdered on the hill, and who was buried here when the 

 churchyard was refused. Now at Lincoln and Bury St. Edmund's 

 are buildings still called Jews' houses — almost the first houses of 

 stone that superseded the habitations of the English burghers. 1 

 Anthony Wood says that there was a mount outside Oxford 

 . Castle called " The Jews' Mound." Did the name get applied to 

 any old stonework ? The " Jews' Kitchen " is the name given to a 

 building in Cornwall by " Q." in his novel, The Splendid Spur, and 

 "Jews' houses" is the name of any old smelting works in Cornwall. 

 There is also a kind of lias stone found at Wedmore, in Somerset, 

 in large blocks, locally called " Jews," but they are said not to bear 

 cutting, so apparently that cannot be the derivation. In the name 

 " Devil's parrock," at Hill, we may see the old usage which left 

 small bits of land unused under the open field system, for elsewhere 

 we find " Cloutie's croft," and " the gude-man's field," which may 



1 See Social England, I., 326, 330, for Jews as builders. 



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