By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 



281 



document, 1 printed in Sir R. C. Hoare's work, is of considerable 

 length, partly in Latin and partly in English, and is addressed to 

 all ' the sons of our Holy Mother the Church/ Provision is made 

 that one copy of it should be kept in the Registry at Salisbury, and 

 another in the church chest at Charlton. The latter copy, like too 

 many similar documents entrusted to the tender mercies of the 

 churchwardens of the eighteenth century, is now missing. 



After leaving Charlton we soon reach Nether or Lower Don- 

 head, or, as it is commonly termed, Donhead St. Andrew. This 

 parish, together with that of Upper, or Over, Donhead (Donhead 

 St. Mary), probably originally constituted but one manor ; at all 

 events, they were so held when the lordship became vested in the 

 Lords Arundel, of Wardour. I cannot help thinking that Donhead 

 must be the place alluded to under the name of * Duningland 9 in a 

 charter of Ethelbert of Wessex (a.d. 860), by which he grants an 

 estate there to his ' beloved and venerable minister Osmund ' (diiecto 

 et venerabili ministro Osmundo). It is included among the deeds 

 in the Shaftesbury chartulary, 2 and though it recites only the gift 

 to Osmund, is headed as given ' Deo et Ecclesice.' The Saxon in 

 which the boundaries are given is miserably corrupt ; indeed the 

 manuscript itself is a transcript of as late a date as possibly the 

 reign of Henry V. The mention however among the land-limits, 

 of Sumkdh evidently 'Semley,' and Hrycgledh probably ' Ridge 

 Leigh,' coupled with the fact that the river ' Noddre ' (Nodder) is 

 also named as bounding a part of it, sufficiently identify the land 

 in question as being in the neighbourhood. At all events the way 

 in which the former part of the word is spelt in all old documents, 

 ' Dun ' or ' Dime* leaves no doubt of its derivation from the Anglo- 

 Saxon ' Dun,' a down, or hill, as we speak of ' the Downs,' the 

 ' South Downs,' &c. It is the same word which enters into the 

 composition of Dun-worth and Down-ton. 3 



1 Hundred of Dun-worth, p. 57. 2 Kemble's Cod. Diplom., No. 283. 



3 The author of the ' Hundred of Dunworth,' in "Hoare's Modern Wilts" 

 suggests that the river ' Noddre ' may also have been called the ' Don ' ; and 

 that, as several springs which supply that river rise in "Wincombe, a manor 

 within Donhead St. Mary, this circumstance may have suggested the name Don- 

 head, that is, the source of the Don. There does not seem to be any foundation 

 for the hypothesis on which this opinion is based. 



