174 



Calne. 



small a surprise as that, some elaborate machinery must first have 

 been established below. How could you contrive to let a whole 

 floor down at once without some very great preparation beforehand ? 

 That preparation would have to be made by the carpenters and 

 blacksmiths of Calne ; and if the carpenters and blacksmiths at 

 Calne in A,D. 978 could carry out such a nice little affair on the 

 sly, without its being talked of all over the town, the workmen of 

 A D. 978 must have had more control over their tongues than their 

 brethren have now-a-days. 



The break-down could be nothing but an accident from over- 

 weighting an old floor. I have, from time to time, observed in the 

 newspapers of the day the very same thing happening, and, oddly 

 enough, in more than one case, the chairman escaped without hurt. 

 In 1883, at Rockwell Green, near Wellington, in Somersetshire, in 

 an upper room converted into a temperance hall, the centre of the 

 floor gave way, and about one hundred persons were precipitated 

 into the room below. The chairman and a friend occupied a platform 

 at the end of the room furthest from the door, and remained unhurt. 

 In 1870, at Richmond, in Virginia, there was a most appalling 

 disaster. The election of a mayor was going on, and the congress- 

 room, not a very large one, was closely packed with more than 

 three hundred persons. The judge's bench was on a raised platform 

 or ledge at one end, and just as the two judges had entered the room 

 and taken up their seats a crackling noise of small timbers was 

 heard, and the floor went down into the room below. Fifty-eight 

 people were killed and above a hundred wounded, but the ledge, 

 about 12ft. wide, on which the judges sat, did not go down, and on 

 this they were saved. The very same thing happened at Ruan, in 

 Cornwall, in the year 1864. At a petty sessions the floor fell in, 

 with the exception of about 6ft. barricaded off for the use of the 

 bench and officials. The whole body of the people, about two 

 hundred in number, were pitched into a cellar beneath : but the 

 magistrates escaped. 



At Glastonbury, many years ago, was a very old inn that had 

 belonged to the monastery. It stood where a modern one called 

 the White Hart now does. It was in a very decayed condition, 



