like, are produced by wooden stamps. But the really beautiful examples are not the products of to-day. These belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and are lavish in decoration of a Renaissance character moulded in high relief. Architects with sufficient culture and understanding to enable them to appreciate local style have, in recent years, reintroduced decoration of this character when building residences in the country, but many a humble cottager lives within walls that display a profusion of artistic devices unapproached by the houses of the wealthy. Discoveries close by the church on Chipping Hill have led to the belief that the building stands on, or near, the site of a Temple of Diana, and certainly Roman bricks are still visible in great numbers in the walls of the tower. A memorial in the chancel to Sir Gilbert East, who died in 1828, reminds the historian of some strange survivals existing at that time. The Easts were owners of the tithes at Witham, and although they lived so far distant as Berkshire, always insisted on their right of being buried here. Sir Gilbert East's body was, by his express direction, buried beside his wife, with a band of brass encircling both, engraved with the words from the marriage service, "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." His funeral was a three days' business, with knights bannerets accompanying, and much pomp and circumstance. In the family vault they laid him, wrapped in linen, returned to Berkshire for the reading of the will, when, to the dismay of the family, it was found that the knight had expressly wished to be buried in woollen. The family solicitor hurried back and, disinterring his defunct client, saw to it that he was comfortably tucked in as desired. Between Witham and Kelvedon, where the road runs level, there is but one hamlet, an offshoot of Rivenhall known as Rivenhall End, where a cottage close by the "Fox" inn, once a toll-house, bears its former history, plain to read, in the evidence of its windows commanding either approach, up or down the road. A mile and a half beyond begins Kelvedon, set down in the flats beside the River Blackwater; "Kelvedon Easterford, vulgo Keldon," as Ogilby calls it; "consisting," he continues, "chiefly of inns"; a description which remains strikingly true to this day. This pronunciation, "Keldon," throws some light upon the following remarks of an old traveller who kept a diary of his wayfaring, and, writing in 1744, says, "From Colchester in an hour or two, I came to an old Village call'd Kildane, where they tell you the famous Massacre of the Danes began; but the true Name of the Town is Kelvedon."