The name may, however, as I conceive it, be equally well a corrupt version of “Shepherd’s Shaw.” “Shaw” = the old Anglo-Saxon for a coppice, a clump of trees, or a bush. We see, even to-day (as of course merely a coincidence) a clump of trees on the mystic tumulus beside the remains of the house: trees noticeable enough on these otherwise naked downs, now, as from time immemorial, a grazing-ground for sheep. In this view Shepherd’s Shore would be equivalent to “Shepherd’s Shaw,” and that to “Shepherd’s Wood,” or “Shepherd’s Bush.” A shepherd’s bush was commonly a thorn-tree on a sheep-down, used as a shelter, or as a post of observation, by shepherds watching their flocks. Such bushes, by constant use, assumed distinctive and unmistakable forms,[15] and in old times were familiarly known by that name. But, to resume matters more purely Dickensian: it is the “Waggon and Horses” inn at Beckhampton that most nearly realises the description of the house in _The Pickwick Papers_, although even here you most emphatically go up into the house (as the illustration shows) instead of taking “a couple of steep steps leading down.” It is “on the right-hand side of the way,” and being at a kind of little cultivated oasis at the hamlet of Beckhampton, where the roads fork on the alternative routes to Bath and Bristol, it may be considered as “about half a quarter of a mile” from the recommencement (not the end) of the Downs. The “Waggon and Horses” is just the house a needy bagman such as Tom Smart would have selected. It was in coaching days a homely yet comfortable inn, that received those travellers who did not relish either the state or the expense of the great “Beckhampton Inn” opposite, where post-horses were kept, and where the very _élite_ of the roads resorted. “The humble shall be exalted and the proud shall be cast down,” and it so happened that when the Great Western Railway was opened to Bath and Bristol on June 30th, 1841, the great inn fell upon ruination, while its humbler neighbour has survived--and does very well, thank you. It should be added that in the view presented here you are looking eastward, back in the direction of Marlborough. The great dark hill beside the road in the middle distance is the vast pre-historic tumulus, the largest known in Europe, famous as Silbury Hill. The great house that was once “Beckhampton Inn” is now, and long has been, Mr. Samuel Darling’s training-stables for racehorses. There is probably no better-kept lawn in England than that triangular plot of grass in front of the house, where--as you see in the picture--the roads fork. [Illustration: “BECKHAMPTON INN.”]