By the Rev. A. C. Smith, M.A. 



323 



coal would have been by no means procurable : home-baked bread 

 was the universal rule of the parish : home-brewed beer was, until 

 recently, manufactured, not only in the farms, but in the cottages ; 

 and the knitting of woollen stockings and the plaiting of straw for 

 hats and bonnets, were two employments for which our village was 

 notorious, even till within the last twenty years, when machine-made 

 articles rendered such handiwork unremunerative, and completely 

 drove the straw-plaiter at least out of the market. 



Situation. 



With this preliminary introduction of our retired village and of 

 life therein a hundred years ago, I proceed now to treat of some of 

 its individual characteristics, and first its situation. 



The parish of Yatesbury lies at the height of 536 feet above the 

 sea, 1 on the broad plateau of the Marlborough Downs which stretches 

 eastwards from the top of Cherhill Hill to the foot of Hackpen. It 

 is true there is a very slight dip on this table-land, extending through 

 its whole length, into which the fields on both sides drain, so that 

 quite a respectable stream 2 runs during the winter months right 

 through the parish from west to east, towards Abury, enriching the 

 land, and forming a long succession of water-meadows; though 

 during the height of summer it generally exhibits a perfectly dry 

 water- course, an Indian nullah, in fact, in miniature, to compare 

 small things with great. In this depression — if so flat a surface 

 deserves the name — lies the parish of Yatesbury : in shape not un- 

 like a conical helmet with horse-hair plume depending behind, for 

 it rises to a point like a sugar-loaf at the north, and at the south- 

 east corner depends a long narrow strip, some half-mile in extent, 



1 I speak with confidence on this point, inasmuch as my friend Colonel Ward 

 on one occasion brought the well-known meteorologist, Mr. Symonds, and a whole 

 army of aneroids, to test our exact height above the sea. 



2 This is indeed one of the real sources of the Kennet, which rises in Highway 

 Field, one mile north of Yatesbury ; the other source being in Winterbourne 

 Bassett, three miles or more to the east : both unite at Abury, and flow to 

 Swallow-head, south of Silbury, the reputed and very picturesque, but not actual, 

 source of the Kennet, though the springs there are abundant and largely inorease 

 the infant river. 



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