By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jacfoon, F.S.A. 



35 



adjoining 1 Wiltshire : and as it lies under the northern escarpment 

 of Salisbury Plain it used to be called " Westbury under the Plain " 

 to distinguish it more particularly from Westbury-on-Trym, near 

 Bristol, and Westbury-upon-Severn, both in Gloucestershire, as well 

 as from Westbury, near Wells, in Co. Somerset. I^X^r^r*^^ 



One peculiarity is that, whereas all the other hundreds in tne 

 county contain, more or less, many parishes, the hundred of West- 

 bury consists of only one — the parish of Westbury. It is very 



in the centre. For those who may wish to take so long a walk, there 

 is for their guidance an old Perambulation deed, taken three hundred 

 years ago, which describes the parish boundaries with a very curious 

 minuteness, It includes several smaller places, villages and hamlets, 

 as Bratton, Westbury Leigh, Dilton, Heywood, &c. Of the most 

 ancient inhabitants there are vestiges in plenty, both above and 

 underground. On the downs above Bratton are the oldest, the 

 usual tumuli or burial mounds, and the great earthwork called Bratton 

 Castle. There are also traces of the Romans, and, after them, of 

 the Romanised Britons. Wherever the name of Ridge or Street 

 occurs in a country place, it is probable that something Roman 

 is not far off : and so it is here. There are, as is well known, four 

 or five principal highways called Roman (though some of them are 

 suspected to be really older), traversing the whole length of Britain 

 in various directions ; but there were by-ways as well as highways, 

 and these are now to be discovered by local observers. The Romans 

 were at very great pains and cost in making their roads : some were 

 paved, others made with gravel or stone, but generally raised above 

 the level of the ground so as to present a slight ridge. Ridge is a 

 common country people's name for an old Roman way ; one in 

 Yorkshire, a very perfect specimen, goes, in the dialect of that 

 county, by the name of the Roman " rig." Now that name occurs 

 here at several places, in one continuous line. You have first, 

 simply, Ridge (Rudge, as they call it), Hawkn^tf, Coteridge, Stor- 

 ridge, Brernridge, and Norridge (i.e., North Ridge) : and you have also 

 Short Street ; all contiguous : so that there can be little doubt about 

 a Roman by-way having gone along there, though where it came 



large, somewhere about thirty miles round, the town being nearly 



d 2 



