ANTiqUITIES OF SELBOENE. 
263 
water, or whatever purpose, we were going to procure, but found that 
the labourers had just broken it in pieces, and carried it out on the 
highways. 
The priory of Selborne had possessed in this village a grange, an 
usual appendage to manerial estates, where the fruits of their lands 
were stowed and laid up for use, at a time when men took the natural 
produce of their estates in kind. The mansion of this spot is still 
called the Grange, and is the manor-house of the convent possessions 
in this place. The author has conversed with very ancient people who 
remembered the old original Grange ; but it has long given place to 
a modern farm-house. Magdalen College holds a court-leet and court- 
baron ^ in the great wheat-barn of the said Grange, annually, where the 
president usually sup-erintends^ attended by the bursar and steward of 
the college. f 
The following uncommon presentment at the court is not unworthy 
of notice. There is on the south side of the king's field (a large 
common-field, so called), a considerable tumulus, or hillock, now 
covered with thorns and bushes, and known by the name of Kite's 
Hill, which is presented, year by year, in court as not ploughed. Why 
this injunction is still kept up respecting this spot, which is surrounded 
on all sides by arable land, may be a question not easily solved, since 
the usage has long survived the knowledge of the intention thereof. 
We can only suppose that as the prior, besides thurset and pillory, had 
also furcas, a power of life and death, that he might have reserved this 
little eminence as the place of execution for delinquents. And there 
is the more reason to suppose so, since a spot just by is called Gaily 
(Gallows) Hill. 
The lower part of the village, next the Grange, in which is a pond 
and a stream, is well known by the name of Gracious Street, an appella- 
tion not at all understood. There is a lake in Surrey, near Chobham, 
called also Gracious Pond ; and another, if we mistake not, near 
Hedleigh, in the county of Hants. This strange denomination we do 
not at all comprehend, and conclude that it may be a corruption from 
some Saxon word, itself perhaps forgotten. 
It has been observed already, that Bishop Tanner was mistaken when 
he refers to an evidence of Dodsworth, " De mercante feria de Seleburne.'^ 
Selborne never had a chartered fair ; the present fair was set up since 
the year 1681, by a set of jovial fellows, who had found in an old 
almanack that there had been a fair here in former days on the first of 
August ; and were desirous to revive so joyous a festival. Against this 
innovation the vicar set his face, and persisted in crying it down, as 
the probable occasion of much intemperance. However, the fair pre- 
vailed but was altered to the 29th of Ma}^, because the former day often 
interfered with wheat-harvest. On that day it still continues to be 
held, and is become an useful mart for cows and calves. Most of thy 
lower house-keepers brew beer against this holiday, which is dutied be 
* The time when this court is held is the mid-week between Easter and 
Whitsuntide. 
t Owen Oglethorpe, president, &c. an. Edw. Sexti, primo fviz. 1547. J demised to 
Bobert Arden Selborne Grange for twenty years. Eent vi^'. — Index of Leases, 
