By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 



39 



They could have Is. 6d. per week per head from the justices, for 

 the asking, and with a long family that was better than wages. 

 " Broughton would not long have been Broughton, at that rate," 

 a farmer once said to me. We are mending now, though still 

 there are things against us. The rate-payers are better able to 

 live. The poor acknowledge that they are better off. I know a 

 family which used regularly to receive 9s. per week under the old 

 system, but have maintained themselves ever since, and feel hap- 

 pier, to their own surprise. We are still held back by the cottier 

 weaving population on the skirts of the commons, and by two ad- 

 joining " close" parishes. There being no cottages in these parishes, 

 the labourers there dwell here, and so come on our rates when they 

 are in want, though in no way contributing by their industry to 

 our wants. 



Means of Communication. 



We have the remains of an old pack road. It enters our parish 

 from the west, by a hedge one mile and a half in length (said to 

 be the longest in the large parish of Bradford) : it crossed the brook 

 close to Mill farm by a bridge, which fell in while a horse was 

 crossing about 1812, and the foundations of which are now visible. 

 From this point the road diverged, one branch going to the ford 

 over the Avon above Monkton, the other passing Holmbrook to 

 Shurnell. Both branches are easily traced, particularly the one by 

 Monkton. On crossing the river, this last turned to the east, and 

 even now exists in all its integrity of deep holes and sharp turnings 

 round the corners of fields, with the greatest possible respect for 

 private boundaries and rights, with none whatever for the public 

 convenience. Such crooked paths as these are signs of peaceful 

 times. The straight B-oman roads are memorials of a conquest, and 

 of forced labour; vce victis was all the answer given by the Roman 

 engineers to the remonstrances of the British proprietor. They 

 were made as much by the sword, as by the spade. 



In the year 1762 an act was passed " for repairing, widening, 

 turning, and shortening the road leading from Forrard's common, 

 in the parish of Bradford, through Holt and Melksham to Homan's 



