By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 



191 



It is to be regretted that the occupations of our parishioners have 

 so seldom been recorded. From 1700 to 1713, and again from 

 1781 to the present day, there are such records. The community 

 in the earlier of these periods was made up principally of farm 

 laborers, but we had clothiers, weavers, masons, bakers, maltsters, 

 tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, a shearer, grocers, 

 thatch ers, and even a fiddler resident. So we were a community in- 

 dependent of all the world. We made our own clothes, baked our 

 own bread, sheared our sheep, brewed our beer, built and thatched 

 our houses, and fiddled at our village festivals. 



But in later times and at the present day it is with difficulty that 

 we preserve a baker, a carpenter and a blacksmith amongst us for 

 our most pressing daily necessities, and for every other want we have 

 to resort to the nearest town. The small trader must always have 

 a hard time of it, he therefore ends by throwing up or by migrating 

 to the next town. There the country villager must follow him, and 

 whilst good roads and cheap railways make it easy for him to do 

 so, the credit he can obtain by flitting from shop to shop is another 

 inducement. Here, it seems to me, is one of the reasons for the 

 marked decrease in the rural populations and the comparatively 

 marked increase in the populations of the towns. 



But " revenons a nos moutons " and from our registers let me 

 pass to 



"Our Church" and Churchyard. 



Our Church was re-built under a faculty of date the 30th June, 

 1843. 



The tower, the entrance porch, and the font are parts of the old 

 structure; the windows in the nave are five in number, and are 

 exact re-productions of three that before existed ; but the rest of the 

 building is new. Such ancient architecture as we have in it is 

 pronounced not later than John, 1199 — 1 21G ; but the doorway to 

 my mind is earlier, corresponding in its circular ornamentation, its 

 shafts and capitals with the fragments in existence of our Priory 

 Church. 



The Church is dedicated to St. Peter, and a figure in the east 



