Something for those interested in the local history of N Wilts....

[4D]

Have a look on wiki reg, under calne history. Interesting stuff.

[Reg Smeeton]

Have a look on wiki reg, under calne history. Interesting stuff.

In AD 978 Anglo-Saxon Calne was the site of a large two-storey building with a hall on the first floor. It was here that St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury met the Witenagemot to justify his controversial organisation of the national church, which involved the secular priests being replaced by Benedictine monks and the influence of landowners over churches on their lands being taken away. According to an account written about 1000, at one point in this meeting Dunstan called upon God to support his cause, at which point the floor collapsed killing most of his opponents, whilst Dunstan and his supporters were in the part that remained standing. This was claimed as a miracle by Dunstan's supporters

Dunstan was a Wessex man..well connected to the Cerdicingas + Glastonbury connections...could be that it justified a place of pilgrimage, for the yokels of Wroughton. No doubt you could flog bits of the timber from the floor.

Apparently Dunstan was very popular for several centuries in the early Middle Ages.

Anything known on the 2 storey building?

[Reg Smeeton]

 

Found this from Richard Jeffries...

A good and a long way back to Coate is to go north-
west from Winterbourne Monkton to the tiny church of
St. Peter's, Highway, near Hilmarton, it and its weedy
and not populous churchyard half lost among thatched
white cottages. From there to Swindon is a footpath
through Clevancy, Clyffe Pypard, Broad Town, under
Bincknoll ' Castle,' through Elcombe, following, it may
well be, in places, the old pilgrim's way that led past Holy
Cross at Swindon, past Elcombe, Bushton, Clyffe Pypard,
and Studley, on its way to the shrine and well of St.
Anne's-in-the-Wood at Bridlington, in Somerset.

[Reg Smeeton]

 Ok...I may be talking to myself here, where's Leefer when you need him.  

 It's not Bridlington, but Brislington.

 Swindon connection here in this

http://brislingtonarchaeology.org.uk/projects/st_anne/index.html

And where the fuck is Holy Cross in Swindon?

[Reg Smeeton]

 Further, Edward Thomas noted writer just before the Great War, with Swindon links quotes....William Morris, of Desmond fame.

At Swindon it is said that the Holy Well stood on a road coming from the east and going westward past Bradenstoke Abbey into Somerset and another used by pilgrims to the shrine of St Anne's in the Wood at Brislington in Somerset which went by Elcombe, hay lane Bridge, Bushton, Clyffe Pypard, Calne, Studley, Chippenham, Pewsham Forest, Bradford, Keynsham Abbey and Whitchurch to Brislington

Think we're getting somewhere...I'd imagine that Newton Johnson is getting his stuff from Jeffries, who is probably getting it from Morris