102 



St. AutUen's, South Wraxall. 



similar houses at Chapel Plaister, and at Tory (the highest part of 

 the town of B rad ford-on- A von ), calls each of them an " Heremitage," 

 not hereby denoting one of those primitive hermitages which were 

 formed in the obscurity of a wilderness or the recesses of a forest, and 

 the simple purpose of which was to allow some recluse to live the 

 life of a devotee, but one of those useful single houses which were 

 stationed in various places to afford the traveller food and shelter. 

 Fosbrooke, in his British Monaehism, quotes from the life of Fiacre, 

 in the Golden Legend, who, having procured a spot in which u to 

 lede his lyfe heremyticke and solitarily/'' there " founded a chyrche" 

 and, " beyonde it a lytill way thens he byldid a lytil house wherin 

 he dwelled, and there herberowed the pour that passed by." In Don 

 Quixote, also, is mentioned a hermitage, which had, adjoining to it, 

 e 1 2l little house, built by the labour of the hermit's own hands, which, 

 though narrow, is large enough to receive travellers} 



Whilst on this subject it may be mentioned that an interesting 

 document will be found in Sir R. C. Hoare's "Wilts, (Heytesbury 

 Hundred,) relating to a hermitage at Codford St. Mary, and which I 

 is reprinted in Dr. Ingram's Memorials of that parish. We have I 

 there the royal charter of 10 Edward II., authorizing Oliver de | 

 Ingham to give and assign two acres of land to c< Henry de Mareys, 

 chaplain and hermit, to construct anew a chapel in honour of the 

 Holy Cross, and houses fit for habitation," for certain offices and 

 uses therein specified. He also mentions other documents illustrative I 

 of similar matters — a commission of enquiry previous to the granting J 

 a licence to a hermit at Fisherton, near Salisbury, in the Register of 

 Bishop Chandler (1418) — and also from the same register of the date j 

 1423 the " Profession of the Hermit," — ad finem pontis villce de \ 

 Maijdenhith — at the end of the bridge of the town of Maidenhead, 

 in Berkshire. 



That there was a " Hermit " at Bradford-on-Avon is also proved 

 by the following extract, kindly forwarded to me by Canon Jackson, 

 from a document at Longleat, entitled "Compotus expensarum j 

 I 



1 See Gent. Mag., Feb., 1835 (p. 144), in an article on Chapel Plaister, to ., 

 which I am indebted for some of the above particulars. 



