26 



Facts relating to Marlborough. 



into the water. And the machine was recovered again by means 

 of long ropes attached to tho shafts. 



The tre-bucket was a chair at the end of a beam which acted on 

 (he see saw principle on a stump put into the ground at the edge 

 of tho water. 



Cucking Stools of the Tre-buchet kind must have been common 

 in the last century, as my late friends Mr. Curwood, the eminent 

 Barrister, and Mr. Bellamy, who was clerk of assize on the Oxford 

 Circuit, and went the Circuit for 60 years, both remembered them 

 on the village greens about the country, in a more or less perfect 

 state as the stocks are now. And Mr. Neild, the celebrated writer 

 on Prisons, in a note to a letter in the Gent. Mag. 1803, p. 1104, 

 says, that one of the Cucking Stools of this kind existed in the 

 Reservoir of the Green Park in the memory of persons then living. 



In the first number of the Society's Magazine, there is a litho- 

 graph of the Tumbrel Cucking Stool at Wootton Basset. The 

 drawing is accurate in all respects except the date, which should 

 be 1686 instead of 1668. 



My friend Mrs. Hains of that place saw it about 60 years ago, 

 when it was in a perfect state, chair, wheels and shafts ; but the 

 shafts were in so worm-eaten a state, that they did not appear 

 likely to bear their own weight much longer ; and when I saw it 

 about 25 years ago, there only remained the chair and the wheels, 



which were about the size of the 

 fore wheels of a waggon. The 

 Chair in a very good state of preser- 

 vation, was lent by the Corporation of 

 Wootton Basset to the Society, for the 

 Temporary Museum at Marlborough, 

 accompanied by a note from Mr. Walter 

 Pratt, who stated that " some school 

 boys unfortunately had more respect 

 for animal comfort than antiquity, for 

 they were caught in the very act of 

 burning the wheels, and the chair 



Remains of the Cucking 



stool at wootton Basset, Sep. 1859. would have followed but ior the school- 



