82 



The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. 



I had the curiosity, for the purpose of this paper, to go through 

 a volume of Wiltshire charities, and it appears that beside these 

 larger foundations just mentioned, there are about one hundred and 

 forty charitable bequests, of various amounts, all made by ladies. 



The next case to be mentioned is one which cannot be placed 

 under any particular head, because it is of a peculiar kind, and in 

 this county certainly unique. It is a charity very well known in the 

 neighbourhood of Chippenham and Calne ; a charity on a very good 

 foundation, and known by the name of " Maud Heath's Causeway.'' 1 

 In the reign of King Edward IV. one Mrs. Matilda or Maud 

 Heath, said by tradition to have begun life as a market-woman, 

 being sore hindered from getting her eggs to market, left certain 

 houses and lands, the rents of which were to make and maintain a 

 pitched causeway across what was then a very swampy district, for 

 about four miles, from Chippenham to Wick Hill, near Bremhill. 

 A column on that hill was erected some years ago, by the Marquis 

 of Lansdowne and Mr. Bowles, the poet, in memory of this usefully 

 benevolent old dame. For surely this is a most useful and rational 

 sort of benevolence. May it not be called a defect in our highway 

 system, that, whilst the roads are maintained, as they are, in excellent 

 condition for the more pleasant travelling of those who keep carriages 

 and horses, footpaths are very much forgotten, and the poor market- 

 wives of the present day are left, in bad winter weather, to struggle \ 

 along through the mud as they best can ? So far at least as North 

 Wilts is concerned, where sometimes the soil is very wet and sticky, 

 it is what the people call " desperate bad travelling " for humble I 

 folk who use their own legs for the purpose. And so, as in my 

 winter's walks I often sigh for Maud Heath's Causeway, I take this 

 opportunity of reckoning her among the eminent ladies in Wiltshire 

 history; which indeed, in one sense, she certainly is ; for there she I 

 sits, a figure in stone, as large as life, with her basket on her lap, 

 and in the costume of her period, 56 feet up in the air, on the top 

 of the column alluded to. 



Of the ladies next to be named, as having earned eminence in 



See Wilts Archceological Magazine, vol. i., p. 251. 



