By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 6$ 



the eastern slope is mostly easy. The spur in question is no excep- 

 tion ; the ascent from the vale of Minety is gentle and continuous. 



The river scenery changes, gradually increasing in interest. 

 Here the stream, strongly coloured by the alluvial deposit through 

 which it eats its way, flows between meadow banks ; a few miles- 

 lower down, towards Bath, it passes through deep and green val- 

 leys ; further on still, at Clifton, through rock and wood. With' 

 us its beauty is of a more tranquil, though never of a tame charac- 

 ter. The reaches, now straight now winding, the volume of water,, 

 the dipping willows and bulky elms by the side, the banks gay 

 with the purple loose-strife, bull-rushes, and broad-flags; the shel- 

 tered nooks of the surface, paved with the platter-like leaf, and 

 yellow flower of the water lily ; the level meadows dotted with 

 large grazing beasts, sheep and horses; the gentle slopes which 

 lead the eye to the distance beyond, the sharp angular outline of 

 Round way, the more curved lines of Sandridge and Bowden Hills, 

 the straighter barrier of the Plain, the crowned heights of Monkton 

 Farleigh ; in the mid distance, the different farm homesteads, the- 

 factory chimnies and Church tower of Melksham, reminding of the- 

 business of this life and the happiness of a better, — 

 " In the mixture of all these appears 

 Variety, which all the rest endears." 



The parish is otherwise well watered. The brook, from which it 

 takes its name, flows through its south-western part. Broughtom 

 brook rises in the southern slope of Kingsdown, behind Monkton Far- 

 leigh House, close to the Monks' Well. The water is thence conveyed 

 in pipes to a large cistern, supplying once the Monastery and now 

 the great house on its site. It is then lost for a time " underneath 

 the ground," but re-appears again in different spots on the hill's 

 side, "where the morn's sun doth look," in Park wood, in a large 

 fish pond, at Rushmead, till "the struggling water breaks out in 

 a brook," 1 crossing the road leading from Monkton Farleigh to 

 Wraxhall and dividing those two parishes; crosses the road again 

 below Little Chalfield Poor House, passes Little Chalfield and Great 

 Chalfield, skirts a hazel wood, cuts its way deep in the alluvial soiL 



1 Beaumont and Fletcher's 1 Faithful Shepherdess,' before quoted. 



