The Natural History of Wiltshire eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 257 pages of information about The Natural History of Wiltshire.

The Natural History of Wiltshire eBook

John Aubrey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 257 pages of information about The Natural History of Wiltshire.

Wich-hazel in the hundred of Malmesbury and thereabout, spontaneous.  There are two vast wich-hazel trees in Okesey Parke, not much lesse than one of the best oakes there.

At Dunhed St. Maries, at the crosse, is a wich-hazell not lesse worthy of remarque than Magdalene-College oake (mentioned by Dr. Rob.  Plott), for the large circumference of the shadowe that it causeth.  When I was a boy the bowyers did use them to make bowes, and they are next best to yew.
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Hornbeam we have none; neither did I ever see but one in the west of
England, and that at Bathwick, juxta Bath, in the court yard of Hen. 
Nevill, Esq.
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Yew trees naturally grow in chalkie countrys.  The greatest plenty of them, as I believe, in the west of England is at Nunton Ewetrees.  Between Knighton Ashes and Downton the ground produces them all along; but at Nunton they are a wood.  At Ewridge, in the parish of Colern, in North Wilts (a stone brash and a free stone), they also grow indifferently plentifull; and in the parish of Kington St Michael I remember three or four in the stone brash and red earth.

When I learnt my accidents, 1633, at Yatton Keynel, there was a fair and spreading ewe-tree in the churchyard, as was common heretofore.  The boyes tooke much delight in its shade, and it furnish’t them with their scoopes and nutt-crackers.  The clarke lop’t it to make money of it to some bowyer or fletcher, and that lopping kill’d it:  the dead trunke remaines there still. (Eugh-trees grow wild about Winterslow.  A great eugh-tree in North Bradley churchyard, planted, as the tradition goes, in the time of ye Conquest.  Another in ....  Cannings churchyard.  Leland (Itinerary) observes that in his time there was thirty-nine vast eugh-trees in the churchyard belonging to Stratfleur Abbey, in Wales.-Bishop tanner.  Abundance of ewgh-trees in Surrey, upon the downes, heretofore, thô now much diminished.-J.  Evelyn.)
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Box, a parish so called in North Wilts, neer Bathe, in which parish is our famous freestone quarre of Haselbery:  in all probability tooke its name from the box-trees which grew there naturally, but now worne out.

Not far off on Coteswold in Gloucestershire is a village called Boxwell, where is a great wood of it, which once in .... yeares Mr. Huntley fells, and sells to the combe-makers in London.  At Boxley in Kent, and at Boxhill in Surrey, bothe chalkie soiles, are great box woods, to which the combe-makers resort.
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Holy is indifferently common in Malmesbury hundred, and also on the borders of the New Forest:  it seemes to indicate pitt-coale.  In Wardour Parke are holy-trees that beare yellow berries.  I think I have seen the like in Cranborne Chase.
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The Natural History of Wiltshire from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.