128 The Early History of the Ujctper Wylye Valley. 



never be cultivated, originally with the idea of giving something to 

 the evil spirits. And the name " Gwris-church " is a puzzle. It is 

 a round barrow standing on the southern extremity of Hill, away 

 on the down, and the Teutonic " spectral hunt " has become localised 

 round it. 1 



Two surnames which occur in the Brixton registers, Dredge and 

 Maslin, give a glimpse into mediaeval farming. " Dredge " is mixed 

 corn, sown together, such as oats, wheat, and barley ; the word is 

 used in the margin of Job, xxiv., 6, "Maslin," is "miscellin," Latin 

 mixtilio, and is bread made of a mixture of rye and wheat-flour. 



At the dissolution of the Monasteries, the Glastonbury estates in 

 Monkton and Longbridge were bought by Sir John Thynne, as the 

 rhyme has it : — 



"Horner and Thynne 

 When the monks went out, they came in " ; 



but probably the change of owners affected the inhabitants but 



little. Nor is it likely that this district had felt the great change 



whichbegan in 1460, when wool competed with corn-growing in some 



parts so severely, that, in the words of an unnamed petitioner to 



the Crown in 1536 : — 



" The ploughs be decayed, and the farm-houses and other dwelling-houses; 

 so that, where they were twenty or thirty dwelling-houses, they be now 

 decayed, ploughs and all the people clean gone . . . and no more 

 parishioners in many parishes, but a neat-herd and a shepherd, instead of 

 three-score or fourscore persons," 



for on these upland farms there was room for both plough and sheep- 

 fold. In the curious oral tradition about the deep-cut thicket-clad 

 road by Longbridge Church, where ghostly "woolpacks" might 

 tumble out upon the head of the nightly traveller or the straying 

 child, we may have a recollection of this staple trade, which began 

 no doubt in the earliest times. 



There are no more oral traditions till the Civil Wars begin. Of 

 them we still hear an echo in Hill, where traces of the 

 British village are popularly said to be the remains of houses 

 which were battered by the cannon. The times were lively in the 



1 Gun Hill, near Leek, in Staffordshire, is said to mean Battle Hill (A.S. 

 girS). Does it ? {Staffordshire Knots, p. 196. Vyse, Stoke-on-Trent, 1895). 



