Natural history -- England -- Wiltshire; Wiltshire (England) -- History
Mr. Toogood, of Harcot, has fenced his grounds with crab-tree hedges,
which are so thick that no boare can gett through them. Captain Jones,
of Newton Tony, did the like on his downes. Their method is thus: they
first runne a furrow with the plough, and then they sow the cakes of
the crabbes, which they gett at the verjuice mill. It growes very well,
and on many of them they doe graffe.
Limeing of ground was not used but about 1595, some time after the
comeing in of tobacco. (From Sir Edw. Ford of Devon.)
Old Mr. Broughton, of Herefordshire, was the man that brought in the
husbandry of soap ashes. He living at Bristoll, where much soap is
made, and the haven there was like to have been choak’t up with it,
considering that ground was much meliorated by compost, &c. did
undertake this experiment, and having land near the city, did
accordingly improve it with soap ashes. I remember the gentleman very
well. He dyed about 1650, I believe near 90 yeares old, and was the
handsomest, well limbed, strait old man that ever I saw, had a good
witt and a graceful elocution. He was the father of Bess Broughton, one
of the greatest beauties of her age.
Proverb for apples, peares, hawthorns, quicksetts, oakes:
“Sett them at All-hallow-tyde, and command them to grow;
Sett them at Candlemass, and entreat them to grow.”
Butter and Cheese. At Pertwood and about Lidyard as good butter is made
as any in England, but the cheese is not so good. About Lidyard, in
those fatt grounds, in hott weather, the best huswives cannot keep
their cheese from heaving. The art to keep it from heaving is to putt
in cold water. Sowre wood-sere grounds doe yield the best cheese, and
such are Cheshire. Bromefield, in the parish of Yatton, is so—sower and
wett—and where I had better cheese made than anywhere in all the
neighbourhood.
Somerset proverb:
“If you will have a good cheese, and hav’n old,
You must turn’n seven times before he is cold.”
Jo. Shakespeare’s wife, of Worplesdowne in Surrey, a North Wiltshire
woman, and an excellent huswife, does assure me that she makes as good
cheese there as ever she did at Wraxhall or Bitteston, and that it is
meerly for want of art that her neighbours doe not make as good; they
send their butter to London. So it appeares that, some time or other,
when there in the vale of Sussex and Surrey they have the North
Wiltshire skill, that halfe the cheese trade of the markets of Tedbury
and Marleborough will be spoiled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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