C 162' 1 
i^nd venders of them, though in the country villages 
the woodmen will yet talk of the growth of this 
right English Chesnut, And as to Pliny’s telling 
‘us that chefnuts were brought from Sardis to Italy 
long before his time ; that does not make it leis 
probable that they might have been the growth of 
Brita.n, at the very time they were brought from 
thence to Rome. 
The ancient Norman buildings are moftly of 
this wood, wdiich in all probability was fetched from’ 
this country ; moft of the ftone wherewdth our mo- 
nafteries and buildings of fuch lort were erected 
came from Normandy. This feems to have been a 
mutual traffick for fome centuries between the two 
countries. 
How the notion arofe fird, that the fored rnen- 
tioned by Fitz-Stevens to the Northward of London, 
was modly of chefnut, I do not know, nor could I 
ever find any authority for it; though it continues the 
afiertion of moh literary men. If I might conjedure, 
I fliould think it to have arifen from a blunder and 
miftake of the name of Norwood ; there being 
many decayed flubbs of chefnuts in the archbifliop 
of Canterbury’s Norwood, not far from London ; 
which is, no doubt, the place Mr. Miller means, 
when he mentions fuch having been fcen in the 
neighbourhood of the metropolis. 
Mod antiquarians affert that Old London was built 
of chefnut : that this tree grew near London, has 
been proved above from Norwood, and may from the 
name of Chefhunt, in Hertfordlbire ; that it may 
have done fo in former times in great plenty, might 
be fuppofed from what I have faid before j but one 
I reafon 
