Part 25

Under it, to the left, is the Devises: this I take to be the _Punctuobice_ of Ravennas, which he mentions by parcels thus: _Leucomagus_, Bedwin, (_Cimetzone_ for) _Cunetione_ in the ablative case, Marlborough; _Punctuobice_, the Devises: then he begins a new period of cities in Wales, _Venta Silurum_, &c. I suppose here is a remnant of the former part of the word _Punctuobice_ in Poulsholt, a little village hard by; Potern another, Potern-wood, and the name of the hundred Potern, taken, in the first times of their division, from such a corrupt appellation of this place: the last syllable _bice_ subsists in the present name Devises, vulgarly _vies_. This town is excellently situated, about two miles from the bottom of the hills, which keep off the eastern winds, and in a rich soil.[130] Under the hill at Runway is an excellent spring, which the inhabitants have not yet found means to convey thither, though it runs but a little way off the town, where they want water. It is a very large old town, consisting chiefly of two long parallel streets; the houses for the most part of timber, but of a very good model: they value themselves for one of the best weekly markets in England, and for being tenants to the king. It was inclosed by the Romans with a _vallum_ and ditch, which I presently found out: they have made a road of the ditch in most parts round the town; but in several places both that and the _vallum_ are visible enough, and it took in the castle: this castle was Roman originally, finely chosen upon a natural fortification, but in after-times made in a manner impregnable by Roger a bishop of Salisbury; though now it is ignobly mangled, and every day destroyed by people that care not to leave a wall standing, though for a fence to their garden. Here are two churches; the choir of St. Mary’s, of a very old model; the steeple, choir, and both wings of St. John’s, the same, to which parcels have since been tacked all round, and new wide windows put in with pointed arches, instead of the ancient narrow semi-circular ones. Just out of town is a pretty plain, called the Green, with another handsome church and steeple, suburbs to the old town. Here William Cadby, a gardener, dug up his collection of gods, which he carried about for a show: they were found in a garden, in a cavity inclosed with Roman brick: the _Venus_ is of an excellent design; and the Vestal Virgin, as they call it, a fragment of Corinthian brass; it is of very curious drapery: _Vulcan_ is as lame as if made at a forge: the rest equal in designing with the _lares_ of the _Ostiaques_, and not at all mended in the plate published by Dr. Musgrave: he had several coins found thereabouts, and a brass Roman key which my lord Winchelsea bought. Roman antiquities are found here every day. My lord Winchelsea has one brass _Probus_; on the reverse, +Victoria Germ.+ with a trophy: and a great fund of such antiquities is to be met with all around the country. At Calne incredible numbers of Roman coin dug up; so at Studley, in the way to Bath, once a seat of the Saxon kings: I have seen and bought some of these: my lord Winchelsea has many found there.

From hence towards Trubridge is Steeple-Aston, upon the bottom of the downs of Salisbury plain: it is a most excellent church and tower of stone, and had a famous spire of lead upon it, but twice thrown down by thunder and tempest, which absolutely discouraged the inhabitants from setting it up again.

Return we to the Roman Bath road, which we left at Hedington; whence it goes much as the common road to Bath, and all along upon the south division of Chipenham hundred: I could discern its bank now and then upon the road, though much worn away and defaced in defect of necessary repairs: it passes the Avon at Lacock, where has been a great religious house, so by a chapel south of Haselbury: then it descends a hill for two miles together, till it meets, over-against Bathford, the Foss-way, which comes in a strait line hither through Cirencester, from _Benonis_ or High-cross in Warwickshire, where I left it last year: then our road goes round the crook of the river by Walcot to the Bath. This turn it is that swells the distance between Bath and _Verlucio_ to XX. Roman miles, as we before corrected it. The Wansdike runs still not far off this road, but a little north of it through Spy park; so by Ditchbridge, which has its name from it; then to the Shire stones, at the division between Gloucestershire, Wilts, and Somerset. As to the nature of the soil, when we have left the chalky downs at Hedington, it is intirely sand to the river Avon, whence the name of Sandy lanes: from thence to the Bath it is rocky. There is a vast descent from the Downs quite to Bath, and every great ridge is very steep westward.

[Sidenote: +Aquæ Solis.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. LXX. LXXI.]

The Bath is a place so celebrated, and so well known, that I need say but little upon it; nor can much be expected from the small time I rested here: its history and antiquities have been copiously handled by several gentlemen of our own faculty. It is indeed a spot of ground which we Britons may esteem as a particular boon of Nature: it lies in a great valley surrounded with an amphitheatrical view of hills; and its situation on the west side of the island does not a little contribute to its pleasures; for such is ever less subject to violent and enormous alterations of the air by winds and tempest, heat and cold: but the Romans were prudently induced to make a station here, by the admirable hot springs, so wonderful in themselves, and so justly regarded. The walls round the city are for the most part intire, and perhaps the old Roman work, except the upper part, which seems repaired with the ruins of Roman buildings; for the lewis holes are still left in many of the stones, and, to the shame of the repairers, many Roman inscriptions: some sawn across, to fit the size of the place, are still to be seen, some with the letters towards the city, others on the outside: most of those mentioned in Mr. Camden and other authors are still left; but the legend more obscure. The level of the city is risen to the top of the first walls, through the negligence of the magistracy, in this and all other great towns, who suffer idle servants to throw all manner of dirt and ashes into the streets: these walls inclose but a small compass, of a pentagonal form: four gates on four sides, and a postern on the other: from the south-west angle has been an additional wall and ditch carried out to the river; by which short work the approach of an enemy on two sides is cut off, unless they pass the river. The small compass of the city has made the inhabitants croud up the streets to an unseemly and inconvenient narrowness: it is handsomely built, mostly of new stone, which is very white and good; a disgrace to the architects they have there. The cathedral is a beautiful pile, though small; the roof of stone well wrought; much imagery in front, but of a sorry taste. Here they suppose (with probability) stood the Roman temple of Minerva, patroness of the Baths.[131] Before it was a handsome square _area_, but lately deformed with houses encroaching: on the south side are the justly-renowned hot springs, collected into a square _area_ called the King’s Bath. The corporation has lately erected a pretty handsome building before it, called the Drinking-room, for the company to meet in that drink the waters drawn hither by a marble pump from the bottom of the springs, where it is near boiling hot. This water is admirably grateful to the stomach, striking the roof of the mouth with a fine sulphureous and steely _gas_, like that of the German Spa or Pyrmont: though you drink off a large pint glass, yet it is so far from creating a heaviness, or _nausea_, that you find yourself brisker immediately, by its agreeable sensation on the membranes of the stomach: at first it operates by stool, and especially urine: it is of most sovereign virtue to strengthen the bowels, to restore their lost tone through intemperance or inactivity, and renews the vital fire by its adventitious heat and congenial principles. Hither let the hypochondriac student repair, and drink at the Muses’ spring: no doubt the advantages obtained here in abdominal obstructions must be very great. The King’s Bath is an oblong square; the walls full of niches, perhaps the Roman work: there are twelve on the north side, eight on the east and west; about four larger arches on the south: at every corner are the steps to descend into it, and a parapet or balustrade with a walk round it: in the middle is set an aukward timber-work, like a cross, adorned with crutches, the trophies of its wonderful cures: around that emerge the boiling springs very plentifully: upon the south wall is the fanciful image of king Bladud, with a silly account of his finding out these springs, more reasonably attributed to the Romans: they no doubt separated them first from common springs, and fenced them in with an eternal wall. The people have a notion, and probable enough, of subterraneal canals of their making, to carry off the other waters, lest they should mix and spoil the heat of these. It is remarkable that at the cleansing of the springs, when they set down a new pump, they constantly find great quantities of hazle-nuts, as in many other places among subterraneous timber. These I doubt not to be the remains of the famous and universal deluge, which the Hebrew historian tells us was in autumn, Providence by that means securing the revival of the vegetable world. In this bath the people stand up to the chin, men and women, and stew, as we may properly call it; for the most part, in the way of gallantry, and as at a collation. I should judge the method used at Buxton preferable, where the sexes go in separately and privately, where they have liberty to swim about and stir the limbs, and exercise the lungs; whence the whole body will better receive the full force and benefit of the warmth: and this will more effectually put the humours in motion, that should be exterminated at the opened pores: this exercise of the solids sets the glands to work, and every secretion is promoted. Many are the diseases and calamities which here find a happy period, when judiciously applied, which, as a traveller, I need not discourse upon. This brings innumerable people to the salutiferous streams; especially in the summer time, which likewise seems an error owing to custom and fashion; for I doubt not they are equally, if not more beneficial, both internally and externally, in winter than summer. The carrying the water to distant places to drink, seems only a splendid fallacy.

I observe the whole country hereabouts is a rock of good lime-stone, which is the _minera_ of the water’s heat and virtue: but how that comes to be calcined; by what refined chymistry of Nature sulphur and steel are mixed with it; by what means it acquires and conserves with so much constancy this equable and mighty _focus_, together with the reason of fountains in general; I profess, in my sentiments, is one of the great _arcana_ in philosophy hitherto inscrutable.

Behind the southern wall of the King’s Bath is a lesser square, called the Queen’s Bath, with a tabernacle of four pillars in the midst: this is of more temperate warmth, as deriving its water at second-hand from the other. There are likewise pumps and pumping-rooms, for pouring hot streams on any part of the body; which in many cases is very useful, to dissolve sizy concretions about the joints and the like, and recovers the natural elasticity in the relaxed fibres of the solids. The _area_ before this bath and front of the cathedral, is in the centre of the _pentagon_, upon which the city is formed. Why the Romans made it of this unusual figure, I cannot tell: nothing appears from the manner of the ground and situation; but I observe the same of Aix in France. One would be apt to suspect they had a regard to the sacred symbol and mystical character of medicine, which in ancient times was thought of no inconsiderable virtue: this is a pentagonal figure, formed from a triple triangle, called by the name of _Hygeia_, because to be resolved into the Greek letters that compose the word. The Pythagoreans used it among their disciples as a mystical symbol, denoting health; and the cabalistic Jews and Arabians had the same fancy: it is the _pentalpha_, or _pentagrammon_, among the Egyptians; the mark of prosperity. Antiochus Soter, going to fight against the Galatians, was advised in a dream to bear this sign upon his banner; whence he obtained a signal victory. This would make one believe a physician had a hand in projecting this city. Dr. Musgrave thinks it was Scribonius, who accompanied Claudius hither.

In the south-west part of the town are two other baths, not to be disregarded: for in any other place who would not purchase them at the greatest price? The Hot bath is a small parallelogram, not much inferior in heat to the King’s bath: it has a stone tabernacle of four pillars in the middle. The Cross bath, near it, is triangular, and had a cross in the middle; which now is a very handsome work, in marble, of three Corinthian pillars, erected by the lord Milford, in memory of king James the Second’s queen conceiving, as it is said, after the use thereof. Hard by is an hospital built and endowed by a bishop of this see. The water in these two places rises near to the level of the streets, because I suppose in this part of the town the earth is not so much heightened. On the south side of the cathedral are some parts of the abbey left, and the gate-house belonging to it. Not long ago, by money contributed, they made a cold bath, at a spring beyond the bridge, that nothing of this sort might be wanting for the benefit of the infirm.

[Sidenote: TAB. XLIX.]

[Sidenote: TAB. XLI. 2d Vol.]

Since Mr. Camden’s time two inscriptions have been set in the eastern wall of the cathedral, fronting the walks: but this is as imprudently done as those in the city-walls; for, besides the rain and weather, they are exposed to the boys, who throw stones at them: one is that of Julius Vitalis, published by Dr. Musgrave; the other, which he calls a basso relievo of Geta, seems to have been the top of a monumental stone over some common horseman. Harrison’s house, they say, is built against some basso’s and inscriptions. In the 49th plate I have given the whole stone and inscription, now in the wall near the north gate.

At Walcot has been a camp, and many Roman antiquities are frequently found. Lord Winchelsea has an urn, a _patera_, and other things, found in a stone coffin, wherein was a child’s body, half a mile off the Bath.

Riding upon Lansdown, I saw the monument, lately erected by lord Lansdown, in memory of his grandfather Bevil Granvile, slain here in a battle with the parliament forces. Hence, it being a north-west precipice, is a prospect of Bristol, the Severn, &c. This road seems to be the Ricning-street, called Langridge, going to the passage over the Severn, the ancient _Trajectus_ and so along the east side of the Severn, and into Yorkshire. The ground hereabouts is very red, covering a solid rock of stone, which lies in thin layers parallel to the horizon, with as much exactness as if hewn for courses in a wall: this stone is full of little shells; and of this sort is the monument of Julius Vitalis: between the _strata_ are crystallizations or fluors of petrifying juices: all the stone in this country abounds with curious fossils. As you walk along a new paved road, it is very common to find very great _cornua ammonis_, two foot diameter, laid in among the rest; and, though formed with such admirable curiosity, yet the country people walk carelessly over them, as I observed, whilst a horse will startle at so unusual an appearance: the first I saw in the Foss road, going up the hill south of Bath, I took for the image of the Sun, which I remembered to have seen prints of, as it was in _basso relievo_ in the city-walls, with his hair flowing round like rays; and this was well enough represented in a stone that had been worn a little: but I was soon undeceived, when I found great numbers of the same sort further on.[132]

[Sidenote: _The_ +Weddings+. Br. _Temple_.]

[Sidenote: +Marsbury+ _field_.]

[Sidenote: +Bowditch+ _camp_.]

From the Bath I went to visit the famous Celtic temple called the Weddings, in company with John Strachey, esq; who lives near there, a person well versed in natural history and antiquities, and fellow of the Royal Society. I shall describe this memorable curiosity upon another occasion. In the way hither, about Twyfordton, I found a fallow field with but little quantity of earth upon the rock: this was as full of fossil shells as possible, let into a softish stone, which had preserved their very natural colour of blue and white as perfectly as at first. Near Stanton Drue, in a _trivium_, is an old elm-tree made infamous for the bloody trophies of judge Jeffrys’s barbarity, in the duke of Monmouth’s rebellion; for all its broad-spreading arms were covered over with heads and limbs of the unfortunate countrymen. In Chu parish is Bowditch, a large camp on a hill trebly fortified, whence you may behold the isles of Flatholm and Steepholm in the sea. I suppose the word means the circular form of the place. Here is a petrifying spring. This country abounds with coal-pits: the slates that lie upon it, and have not received their due quantity of sulphur, so as to make perfect coal, are most curiously marked with impressions of plants, capillary ones especially, and more particularly those of fern; all which grew in exceeding plenty in this country, and gave their forms to this soft matter at the Deluge. This is indeed a rock, and full of springs, very bad road for travelling, short and steep valleys, narrow lanes, intricate, dark and hard: so no wonder _harts-tongue_, _liver-wort_, _maiden-hair_, _navel-wort_, and the like moist plants, thrive here. The ground in these valleys is very rich: much wood grows upon it; though in some roads you ride upon the superfice of a rock lying flat in great slabs, as if artificially placed with good joints. Many wood-plants grow about here, such as _wood-sorrel_, _strawberries_, _tutsan_ or _park-leaves_, &c. The neatness of the houses even of the poorer sort of people is remarkable, being generally whited over, and with pretty little gardens, which in pure and unartful nature is a necessary adjunct in the happiness of life.

[Sidenote: _Camps._]

There is a camp overlooks Stanton Drue, called Mizknoll; another at Elm, two miles west from Frome: in 1691 a pot of Roman coin found there, most of Constantine junior: it is upon the end of a precipice, and severed from the rest of the hill by a _vallum_ on one side only: south of it runs a rivulet. Masbury castle upon Mendip hills, half a mile from the Foss, a mile north of Shipton-Mallet, of a round form, 150 paces diameter: the two entrances opposite: the environing ditch on one end laps over with a semi-lunar turn, rendering the passage to it oblique. Hereabouts are many camps, whose ditches are hewn out of the solid rock: that above Bristol has four trenches, as many _vallums_, and but one entrance: one would think it impregnable to any thing but hunger. A camp cut out of the rock at Churchill with a single trench. There is a cave equal to that of Ochey-hole at Dolebury. These are from information of Mr. Strachey.

In this county of Somersetshire are three remarkable hills, that make an exact triangle twelve mile each side, much talked of by the country people; Camalet castle, Glassenbury torr, and Montacute. They have a notion that king Arthur obtained from some saint, that no serpent or venomous creature should ever be found in this compass, though frequent all around it. I shall rehearse to your lordship what occurred to me at the places. All this country, though to the eye very pleasant with woods and prospects yet is very disagreeable to travel, for the reasons I just mentioned.

[Sidenote: +Colomeæ.+]

[Sidenote: TAB. XLIII.]

Camalet is a noted place, situate on the highest ground in this county, on the edge of Dorsetshire. The country people are ignorant of this name, which has generally obtained among the learned: they call it Cadbury castle, from the village of North-Cadbury, in which it is: this caution is useful to those that go to enquire for it. Hereabouts rise the rivers of Somersetshire, which run into the Severn sea westward; and that in Dorset, which goes eastward, through Sturminster, into the southern ocean. It is a noble fortification of the Romans, placed on the north end of a ridge of hills separated from the rest by nature; and for the most part solid rock, very steep and high: there are three or four ditches quite round, sometimes more: the _area_ within is twenty acres at least, rising in the middle: its figure is squarish, but conforms to the shape of the hill. There is a higher angle of ground within, ditched about, where they say was king Arthur’s palace: it was probably the _prætorium_ and might be king Arthur’s too. who lived in this place: the country people refer all stories to him. The whole has been ploughed over since the memory of man, and much stone has been taken from the surface, which has altered it. The rampart is large and high, made chiefly of great stones covered with earth, and perhaps, in some parts where it was necessary, laid with mortar: here is only one entrance from the east. It is not unlikely there were buildings erected in the later British times, being of so great strength, and a perfect watch-tower, surveying the country round to an incredible distance. The prospect is woody, and very pleasant; here and there little hills, lofty and steep, peeping up with their naked heads: you reach all the Mendip hills and Black-down in Devonshire. In this camp they find many pebble-stones exactly round, half a peck at a time; whereas there are none such in the country: they suppose them stones to sling withal, fetched from the sea, or perhaps shot in cross-bows. Roman coin in great plenty has been found here, and all the country round: I saw vast numbers of Antoninus and Faustina, about that time and after. The entrance here is guarded with six or seven ditches: on the north side, in the fourth ditch, is a never-failing spring, called King Arthur’s well: over it they have dug up square stones, door-jambs with hinges, and say there are subterraneous vaults thereabouts. Selden, in his notes on _Polyolbion_, writes it was full of ruins and reliques of old buildings. At top they told me many pavements, and arches have been dug up, hand-grindstones, and other domestic or camp utensils. They say there is a road across the fields, that bears very rank corn, called King Arthur’s Hunting-causeway.

[Sidenote: +Cadbury.+]