196 



Calne. 



enough, and with which those who are not familiar with it will have 

 an agreeable opportunity of becoming acquainted in one of the 

 excursions : so that to enter upon a full and detailed description of 

 Bowood is unnecessary. But we must not perform the play and 

 leave out a principal part. 



The great forest of Chippenham, including that of Pewsham, 

 came up very nearly, but not quite, to the very town of Calne, Its 

 eastern boundary was the little stream that runs from Whetham, 

 supplies the lake at Bowood, then crosses the high road at the foot 

 of Chilvester Hill, and falls into the Marden near Studley Bridge. 

 The Marden, till it joins the Avon near Chippenham, was then 

 the boundary. So that Calne itself was just outside the forest, 

 Bowood just within it. When the forest was broken up, in James 

 the First's reign, Bowood Park continued to belong to the Crown, 

 and is spoken of sometimes as King's Bowood, as if some other 

 piece was sold off to some one else. 1 King James granted a lease of 

 the park to a great sportsman of the day, the then Earl of Pembroke, 

 for his life : the reversion to William Murray, one of the Grooms 

 of the Bedchamber. In the words of that document it is described 

 as nine hundred and sixty-eight acres, or thereabout, lying in the 

 parishes of Chippenham and Calne. But Chippenham has now 

 nothing in Bowood : and I believe that it is considered to be what 

 is called a Liberty. 



On the death of King Charles I. it was, of course, seized upon by 

 the powers of the Commonwealth : and in 1649 an Act was passed 

 to sell all the timber, to pay the army with, unless it should have 

 been paid from other sources by a certain day. It is likely that the 

 army was not paid in time, for great havoc was made with the 

 woods till another order was issued to stop it. The deer were still 

 abundant. There is a tradition, how far true I know not, that after 

 old Bromham House, near Bowood, had been destroyed in the Civil 

 Wars, and the Baynton family having built a new one in Spye 

 Park, wished to stock their park, the Bowood deer were driven across 



1 Some portion appears to have been granted to the Audley family, then owners 

 of Sandridge, between Bowood and Melksham. 



