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



339 



little farther down the bourne, on the same plain, but three miles 

 l distant, and within sight of our village. Indeed proximity to the 

 noble sanctuary of Abury, being the only cause of distinction to 

 this retired village, I have thought it not unlikely that its name 

 might somewhow be derived therefrom : and finding" the Anglo- 

 I Saxon lie meaning " outermost," or " more outward," I have sur- 

 | mised whether this could be the source whence the name of Yatesbury 

 i came : certainly it has the advantage of applying equally to the old 

 j form Etesberie, as well as the more modern name ; and would signify 

 j perhaps the utmost limits, or suburbs, of Abury. 1 I should add that 

 i Canon Jones in his interesting papers " on the Names of Places in 

 j Wiltshire," suggests the possibility of Yatton on the west and 

 Yatesbury on the east, signifying the gates, entrances, or openings 

 into " the tongue of land " stretching from Cricklade and Malmes- 

 bury some fourteen miles broad and extending southward some fifty 

 miles long, which Dr. Edwin Guest 2 affirmed was still left in the 

 j possession of the old inhabitants though in the very midst of what 

 had become English territory. Canon Jones however himself in- 

 I clines to the opinion that the former part of our name is some cor- 

 ruption of a personal name, 

 j But whatever Yeatesbury or Etesberie may have been — and I fear 

 that part of our subject must for ever be wrapped in oblivion — there 

 1 is no question that modern Yatesbury is a very small unpretending 

 j village, containing but fifty-seven houses, almost all of them cottages 

 i of the very humblest type, universally built of the soft chalk-stone 

 ! of the locality, and thatched ; moreover the village is compact, 

 without a single outlying cottage, though the houses for the most 

 part are detached, and stand singly in their several gardens. Not 

 j that our village is without its pretensions: it can hold up its head, 

 j and parcel itself out into divisions no less than its more populous 



1 In connection with this view, I must not omit the strange tradition prevalent 

 in the parish that at one time houses extended from Yatesbury to Abury, and 

 that the two villages joined ! 



2 On the history of the early settlements of our English ancestors in this 

 country." Journal of Archseolog. Institute for 1859, vol. xvi., pages 105 — 131. 

 Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 276. 



2 b 2 



