313 



By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 1 



f(g|^jO the Paper which I am now about to have the honour of 

 reading to you, I prefix the brief title of " Rood Ashton," 

 in acknowledgment (though very inadequate), on your part, of the j 

 cordial welcome and noble hospitality with which you have just j 

 been received at that house by Mr. and Mrs. Long. But the name 

 implies a good deal more. It is but the text, which when opened 

 out will present an outline of the history of those estates in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of this town, of which Rood Ashton is 

 the head quarters. 



Rood Ashton proper, was in former times only a very small part 

 of a larger manor called " The Manor of Ashton : " but before 

 entering upon its history as the property of any human being what- 

 soever, I would say a few words as to its condition in times, some- 

 what remotely antecedent to manorial arrangements, whether great 

 or small. For we should be omitting one of the most curious 

 features of the whole story were we to take no notice of the geological 1 

 structure of the district. Archaeologists and topographers taking 

 pen in hand to write about any place, go to the Churches for me- 

 morials of deceased parishioners ; to Record Offices, for odds and 

 ends of ancient local history ; to the Manor Houses, to look at 

 old family pictures, and to ask questions about pedigrees, &c. Then 

 why not search records that have been on the spot, imbedded in the 

 ground, far older, and very often far better preserved, than family 

 pictures and pedigrees : records that cannot be so easily copied or 

 invented as a picture or a pedigree ; and that are, in the most 

 genuine sense of the word, arclicBological ? So, if you please, a 



1 This Paper was read before the Wilts Archaeological Society at the Annual 

 Meeting at Trowbridge, August 8th, 1872. 



