RECENT WILTSHIRE BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, ARTICLES, &c. [N.B.-This list does not claim to be in any way exhaustive. The Editor appeals to all authors and publishers of pamphlets, books, or views, in any way connected with the county to send him copies of their works, and to editors of papers and members of the Society generally to send him copies of articles, views, or portraits, appearing in the newspapers.] Salisbury Plain its Stones, Cathedral City, Villages and Folk. By Ella Noyes, illustrated by Dora Noyes, 1913. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, Limited. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Linen, 9in. × 64in., pp. including title, xii + 320, 10s. 6d. net. Sixteen coloured illustrations and forty-one line illustrations in text from pen drawings, and a sufficient index. Many of the coloured illustrations are very charming, indeed only two of them, Old Sarum and Wilton House, are otherwise than successful. Salisbury Spire; High Street, Salisbury; Salisbury Cathedral; The Cloisters; Butcher Row (quaintly misprinted in the list of illustrations as "Butcher Boy "); Heytesbury; The River Wylye at Wishford; and an Old House at Imber are particularly pleasing. Some of the line illustrations seem to be a little pale and indistinct, as though the paper had not taken the ink properly, but many of them are very pleasant little impressions of the various houses or villages which they illustrate. Among them are Stonehenge; Salisbury from Old Sarum; St. Anne's Gate; Tomb of William Longespee; The Market Place ; and Old House, High Street, Salisbury; Fittleton Church; Upavon; Enford; Amesbury Church; Lake House; Heale House; Battlesbury; Longbridge Deverill Almshouses; 14 Vicarage Street, Warminster; Knook Manor; Boyton Manor; Codford St. Peter, Cross Shaft; Stockton House and Village; Little Langford Church, Doorway; Stapleford Church and Street; Fisherton de la Mere; Bringing the Boughs from Groveley; Chirton Font; and Mere Church. Miss Noyes has interpreted "Salisbury Plain" in a liberal sense, and the villages of the Avon and Wylye Valleys take up a larger portion of the book than the Plain itself. Salisbury too, the Cathedral, the city, the houses in the close, and the 18th century life of the place is dealt with at some length, and the descriptions both of the Cathedral and of the architecture of the various village Churches round the Plain are for the most part knowledgeable and scholarly. Moreover they are in most cases well up-to-date. The screen and the font for instance at Amesbury are both back in their places. There is no attempt at a full description of the Churches, but their leading features of interest and the general character of their architecture is happily hit off in a few words. Of the Down Country the authoress writes "Perhaps one must be bred so to speak of the chalk, have its thin blood in one's veins, to feel the peculiar appeal of this country," and the whole book gives the impression that the writer has been so bred and knows that of which she writes-not as having "got up" the local colour for literary purposes-but because she is of the "Winterbourn" herself. Of course in a book covering so wide a space and touching lightly on so many subjects, history, legend, architecture, archæology—it is inevitable that there should be inaccuracies—and they are not absent here. Yarnbury Castle for instance has not " a single rampart," The Bustard Inn has not been transformed into Racing Stables, The Muniment Room of the Cathedral is hardly "Brick vaulted," the contents of the Upton Lovell "Gold Barrow" are at Devizes and not in the British Museum, the two stones of Stonehenge which fell in 1900 have not been set up again, and the House at Amesbury was not "completely re-built" in 1824. On archæology she touches lightly but for the most part soundly -though it is not correct to say that there are "abundant traces of the Late Celtic period in the contents of the Barrows," at least if "Late Celtic" bears the meaning usually attached to it, nor is the later pottery of the Bronze Age better than the earlier. But in a book of this kind the ordinary reader does not expect or desire minute archæological or architectural detail. What he wishes for, if he is sensible, and what he will find in these pages, is a characterisation of the various places described, set full in admirable style and taste, without any pretentiousness of word painting, but with a knowledge of history and literary reference, always at hand where it is needed to give interest, but never thrust forward in undue display. A book that South Wilts folk will like to have on their shelves and to give to their friends. Noticed, Times Lit. Suppt., May 8th; Salisbury Journal, May 10th, 1913. Leopards of England and other Papers on Heraldry. By E. E. Dorling, M.A., F.S.A. London: Constable & Company, 1912. Cloth, 9in. × 53in., pp. viii. + 136. 7s. 6d. net. Printed by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London. Nine coloured plates, fifteen half-tone plates, and twenty-seven cuts in text. This book contains seven papers, four of which are reprinted from the Ancestor. Of these two deal with Wiltshire matters. Armorial Glass in Salisbury Cathedral," pp. 57–72, describes six shields of the latter half of the thirteenth century, formerly in the Chapter House, and now in the west window of the Cathedral. They are (1) Gold three cheverons gules. Gilbert of Clare, 3rd Earl (2) Paly gules and gold of eight pieces, a variant of the arms of the (3) Azure powdered with fleurs-de-lis gold. Old France (there are (4) Gules three leopards gold. Henry III. (5) Silver a lion gules with a crown gold in a border sable bezanty. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, second son of King John and brother of Hen. III. (6) Gold a cross gules. Roger Bigod, fourth Earl of Norfolk, 1225 -70. In addition there is a seventh shield of the same size and shape-a field of white glass with a green demon and a blue border with bezantlike discs of yellow glass. The demon is apparently sixteenth century glass, the blue border modern, the white glass and the yellow discs appear to be of the thirteenth century, possibly once belonging to a second escutcheon of Cornwall referring to Henry, son of the King of the Romans, who went on crusade in 1268. Carter, in his plate of the Chapter House windows, shows part of a checkered shield, of this series, which has now disappeared. Mr. Dorling suggests that it was that of John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, who married the elder Alice de Lusignan and died in 1305. Mr. Dorling ingeniously argues that the date of this series of shields must lie between 1262 and 1270, and that the eighth Crusade in 1268, in which most of the persons whose arms they contain were concerned, was the occasion of their painting. Why they were set up at Salisbury cannot be said, but if this date is correct they could not have been originally in the Chapter House, for that was not built until the reign of Edward I. Nos. 4 and 5 of the above shields are illustrated in colours in the frontispiece, the others from careful drawings. The other Wiltshire article, "Two Nevill Shields at Salisbury," pp.79— 88, with two illustrations from drawings, deals with glass in the windows of "The Hall of John Hall," built in 1470, the glass being contemporary. The first of these contains, 1 and 4, quarterly, Montagu and Monthermer, 2 and 3, Nevill differenced with the Gobony label of silver and azure, for Richard Nevill the elder, b. 1400, Earl of Salisbury in right of his wife, Eleanor Montagu, only daughter and heiress of Thomas, fourth Earl of Salisbury. The second shield displays seven coats arranged in three columns, Beauchamp, Nevill, Monthermer, Despencer, Montagu, Clare, and Newburgh (of which the Despencer coat is modern glass by Pugin), for Richard Nevill the younger, only son of the Earl of Salisbury, b. 1428, who in right of his wife, Anne Beauchamp, sister and heir of Henry, Duke of Warwick, became Earl of Warwick as well as Salisbury. Both these papers are reprinted from the Ancestor. The other papers are "Leopards of England," "The King's Beasts at Hampton Court," "A Montagu Shield at Hazelbury Bryan," "The Heraldry of the Font at Holt" (Denbighs.), "Canting Arms in the Zurich Roll." It is needless to say that Mr. Dorling's drawings are excellent. Reviewed, Antiquary, March, 1913, pp. 119-120. The Parish Church of Melksham. Plymouth, Seward Mitchell & Co., Printers and Publishers, Buckland Hall, 1912. 9in. × 6in., pp. 38 +2, title unnumbered. 20 illustrations, portrait of Canon Wyld, (Vicar); Church in 1844, from a drawing; Norman arch at E. End; old Key of N. Door; Lady Chapel; Nave, interior; Bells, on the ground; Parvise and old books; First pages of old Churchwardens' Book; Registers (2); Church Plate; Pulpit; six Clerestory windows; Church, exterior from N.E. This is a very useful and nicely illustrated popular handbook to the Church and its history. A few words by way of introduction remind us that ecclesiastically Melksham formerly included Seend, Erlestoke, and Shaw, the first being made a separate parish in 1873, and Erlestoke in 1877. Shaw, separated ecclesiastically in 1838, is still part of the civil parish of Melksham. Beanacre Church, built in 1886, is not consecrated. The architecture of the Church is described in very simple language, but with considerable exactness. In 1845-47 the Church was delivered into the hands of Wyatt, who pulled down the central Perpendicular Tower with its finely panelled belfry stage and rebuilt it, more or less on the same lines, but by no means exactly, at the west end. A not very exact sketch gives an idea of the appearance of the Church before this alteration. Canon Wyld gives from the Churchwardens' Account Books, (of which there are three preserved, 1574-1672, 1740-1798, 1799-1896,) the principal alterations and repairs to which the building has been subjected since the Reformation, and in more detail describes the many additions made to its furniture and decorations of late years, which have converted it during his own incumbency from a somewhat commonplace interior, to one of the richest and most tastefully decorated Churches in the county. It is now particularly notable for good modern woodwork and glass; indeed few Churches have so many good modern windows and what is the more remarkable, perhaps, no really bad ones. The glass of the six windows of the clerestory, illustrating the early history of Christianity in Britain and Wessex, by Messrs. Powell, are a recent and striking embellishment due, as were many other things in the Church, to the generosity of the late Mr. White, of Whitley. A full account of the subjects of these windows is given. Canon Wyld reproduces the Bow Street notice of £40 reward offered by the churchwardens, for the conviction of the thieves who on May 31st, 1803, broke open the Church and carried away the Communion Plate :— "One large Silver Flaggon, Inscribed 'The Gift of Ellen Long to the Parish Church of Melksham, dated (sic) 1734,' one large silver Salver, one small silver Salver, and one Silver Cup." The inscriptions on the eight bells, (two new ones were added 1896), a list of the vicars, and some account of the chief monuments are given. Among the vermin for the destruction of which the churchwardens paid, were martincats and whoops (bullfinches). Little Ridge, Wiltshire, a seat of Mr. Hugh Morrison. An illustrated article in Country Life, October 26th, 1912. When Mr. Hugh Morrison decided on building a house in the extreme corner of Fonthill Park he employed Mr. Detmar Blow to remove to that site the old Manor House of Berwick St. Leonard, some three miles off. The writer of the article says that this house " certainly had three gables on each of its two sides, and was probably in plan something between Boyton and the larger Fonthill house of Elizabethan days, which the picture now above the library chimney-piece at Little Ridge shows to have been a long building with a recessed centre and projecting wings." When Sir R. C. Hoare published a plate of Berwick St. Leonard House in 1829, it was in fairly good condition, though even then used only as a barn, "but in 1905 it stood gaunt, roofless, and derelict, merely an outside shell, and even part of that was fallen, and all decayed." It was therefore decided that the remnant should form part of the new building and be the model for the rest. The most accurate measured drawings were first taken of the irregularity of the old mason's work in order that this might be retained. Then each stone was taken down, labelled, penned in hurdles, removed to the new site and set up again in complete harmony with its former position and appearance." Such details as the finials on the gables, and the ornamental parapets surmounting the bay windows, which appear in Hoare's illustration, had apparently disappeared and have not been reproduced in the re-erected building, the whole of the interior of which is new. The excellent illustrations "Entrance Front," "The Wing from the Bowling Green," a reproduction of Hoare's plate of Berwick St. Leonard Manor, “The S.W. Front,' ""The Lily Pool in the Flower Garden," "The Flower Garden from the Bastion," "The Garden Entrance from the High Terrace," ," "Plans of the First and Ground Floors," "From within the Garden House,' In the Library," The Garden Room," Plaster Work" (mantelpiece), "In the Dining Room,' ‚” “The first flight of the Staircase." The letterpress was reprinted in Salisbury Journal, October 26th, 1912. are: Wiltshire Parish Registers. 66 66 Marriages. London : Phillimore & Co. Vol. XII. 1912. 8vo. pp. viii., + 147. Price 10s. 6d. Contains the marriage registers down to 1837, of Bratton, transcribed by the Rev. J. Gofton; Kington St. Michael, by the Rev. A. H. W. Adrian, and the Rev. F. P. Synge; Fugglestone and Bemerton, by the Rev. W. Symonds; Boyton and Sherington, by J. J. Hammond ; Latton, by A. H. W. Fynmore; and Collingbourne Ducis, by the Rev. R. G. Bartelot and the Rev. G. F. Tanner. Vol. XIII. Edited by John Sadler. 1913. Linen. 8vo. pp. vii., + 146. This volume is entirely taken up with the marriages of St. Edmund's, Salisbury, and contains those from 1559 to 1741, copied by the Rev. A. R. Thurlow and Mr. James Parsons. The remainder will be printed in the next volume. The marriages of seventy-three Wiltshire Parish Reisters have now been printed in this series. The editor appeals for further offers of help in the transcription of Wiltshire registers. The series can only be continued if such voluntary help is given. Anyone willing to transcribe the marriage registers of any parish not yet dealt with should communicate with Mr. J. Sadler, 124, Chancery Lane, London. |