IOC 



Cain*. 



By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



^Pj^UK- Archaeological Society has now been in existence, and 

 f£ iH ^ as ^ e P^ ^ s o roun d> upon the whole, pretty well, for no 

 less than thirty-five years ; and during that time we have visited 

 most of the principal towns in the county, some of them more than 

 once. This is the first time that it has been in our power to hold a 

 Meeting at Calne. We have often been about the neighbourhood, 

 but never at the place itself, so that you have had no opportunity 

 of hearing from a platform any account of your town and its past 

 history. One reason (and in this case one is quite enough) is, that 

 you had no platform for us to stand upon. Until lately there was 

 no assembly room sufficiently spacious to receive with convenience 

 a considerable company, such, more particularly, as has usually at- 

 tended our evening parties. That want has now been supplied by 

 the building in which we are assembled, and the Society with 

 pleasure avails itself of the accommodation. 



After finding a platform, the next thing was to find the history 

 to be delivered from it. In one of my weak moments I was prevailed 

 upon to undertake this : for it certainly is a weak moment when a 

 person undertakes to build a house without being provided either 

 with the stone, the brick, the mortar, or the timber. This was very 

 much the case here : for about Calne very little indeed has ever been 

 published. The parish registers have been very well taken care of, 

 from a very early date : but they do not supply incidents or tran- 

 sactions of general interest. 



There is, indeed, in the Church a very remarkable old chest — one 

 of those hopeful articles of venerable furniture at which an antiquary 

 rushes, full of expectation to find in it no end of valuable information. I 

 But it is no wonder that any documents that may have been in itl 

 are lost, for the chest itself, by some strange carelessness, had been I 



