32G 



Rood Ashton, fyc. 



Now, under the particular circumstances of the present time, when 

 mutton and other meats have risen to such a price as to frighten all 

 the housekeepers of Trowbridge and elsewhere : and when, even 

 those who can afford to buy have been at their wit's end how to 

 keep it during the late sultry weather, nothing can be more useful 

 than to know what the learned Serjeant Hoskins — a lawyer too — 

 particularly desired to know, and wrote down to this cunning county 

 of Wiltshire to ascertain, " How to keep mutton sweet for seven 

 weeks without salt/'' So Aubrey immediately wrote to Mr. Robert 

 Beach, of Steeple Ashton, who replies : — 



" The manner was this. Near Claverton, by Bath, in the stone quarries, are 

 some caves ; and this Brewer the sheepstealer kept his stolen sheep in the oaves, 

 alive! This was the secret" 



You are not asked to follow Brewer's example in stealing sheep ; 

 but considering the scarcity of it, it might perhaps be not amiss if 

 we could contrive to do without it for a little while, and keep our 

 mutton sweet seven weeks without salt, by letting the sheep live. 



The church of Steeple Ashton need not be described, as you have 

 examined it in your excursion. The body of it was built about 

 1500 ; the north aisle by a Mr. Robert Long, in 1501 ; the south 

 aisle by Walter Lucas and his wife Maud. It had once a spire, 

 which Stukeley says was cased with lead. It was much injured by 

 lightning in July, 1670, and hardly had been repaired when it was 

 again shattered by a similar accident in October of the same year. 

 The storm killed the workmen upon it, "in nictu oculi" says 

 Aubrey, [" in the twinkling of an eye "~] . 



At the Bell Inn, Seend, there used to be a drawing of the church 

 with the spire on it : but it is doubtful whether it was a iond fide 

 representation : perhaps taken only from imagination or description. 



There is also a curious account in the Archseologia, of the effects 

 of lightning at this unlucky Steeple Ashton, in 1772. Two clergy- 

 men, the Revs. Mr. Wainhouse (curate of the parish), and Mr. 

 Pitcairn, of Trowbridge, were in the parlour of Steeple Ashton 

 vicarage-house, " when there came a loud clap of thunder and all of 

 a sudden they saw a ball of fire between them, about the size [as 

 they describe it] of a Qd. loaf, surrounded by a dark smoke. It 



