By the Rev. W. C. P lender leath. 



259 



England, did make a very considerable bend at this place. And I 

 therefore imagine the name to mean " the village at the turn of the 

 road." 



Two other derivations have been suggested, one by the late Canon 

 Rich- Jones, who considered the name to be the same as Cheverell, 

 and believed the latter to come from the Welsh gqfr, a goat, and 

 ally which in Irish and Gaelic means a cliff. Concerning which I 

 will only say that it seems to me somewhat far-fetched. For the 

 other derivation Mr. Flavell Edmunds is responsible : he thinks it 

 to be a contracted form of Cherry-hill, and to indicate what was at 

 some time or other, he supposes, the staple production of the village. 

 But if so, it is strange that this old cherry forest should so entirely 

 have disappeared. The cedars of Lebanon wave still where did their 

 predecessors in the days of Solomon ; and from Corinth still come 

 the same minute grapes which took their name from that ancient 

 city — I know not how many centuries ago. But in Cherhill I could 

 count on the fingers of one hand the number of cherry trees now 

 existing, and, I had almost said, I could put into my pockets all 

 their produce. 



The earliest possessor of the manor of Cherhill of whom I can 

 find record is a gentleman of the name of Eitz John, or Fitz Geffry, 

 who is returned in a report made to King Henry III. in 1264 as 

 holding it in capite for one knight's fee, with 227 acres of land. In 

 the following reign it appears to have passed by a female descent 

 into the hands of the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick, with whom 

 it remained for two centuries. Subsequently the Roaches, of 

 Bromham, and the very ancient Gloucestershire family of the St. 

 Amands seem to have held property here, whence the coat of arms 

 seen by Aubrey about 1660. Whether, however, they held the 

 manor or not I cannot say, for the Grubbes, of Eastwell, who were 

 in possession of it at the beginning of the present century, are stated 

 to have received it direct from the Crown, and one of this name— 

 "John Grubb, gent." — occurs in a list of Wiltshire gentry as 

 resident at " Cherrell " in the time of Charles I. The last owner 

 of this family, Mr. William Hunt-Grubbe, who died in 1820, left it 

 to be divided between his four younger children, and it was sold 



s 2 



