XXXV

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Charles G. Harper
CALNE

Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce “Carne”) is not a pleasing place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place. “Calne,” according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father’s three years’ residence there, “is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless; the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it.” With all of which one may agree; save that the “irregularity” of the town is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way—the people of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown quantity.

The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the little town alter the stranger’s view. Calne, in fact, lying so near Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to Calne. It seems (although one’s prejudices are Conservative) as though some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.

There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.

The entrance to the “ancient and royal” borough of Chippenham is hatefully like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by, where “Swiss” Condensed Milk, of the “Milkmaid” brand, is manufactured on an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly) Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was built in the sixteenth century.

THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM.

MAUD HEATH’S CAUSEWAY

The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to borrow a “bull” for the occasion) outside the town. “Maud Heath’s Causeway,” a stone-pitched path along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham, who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge, and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway, so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.

This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was, for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.

According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham—

“From this Wick Hill begins the praise
Of Maud Heath’s gift to these highways.”

At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription—

“Hither extendeth Maud Heath’s gift,
For where I stand is Chippenham Clift.”Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone—a pillar twelve feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts recorded on it:—

“To the memory of the worthy Maud Heath, of Langley Burrell, Spinster: who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick Hill to Chippenham Clift.”

Chippenham Clift. Injure me not. Wick Hill.

A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local clergyman.

The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth, with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids—

“Thou who dost pause on this Ærial height,
Where Maud Heath’s Pathway winds in shade or light,
Christian wayfarer in a world of strife,
Be still—and ponder on the path of life.”

The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.

IMPROVING SENTIMENTS

But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an inscription on the side facing the rising sun—

“Volat Tempus.
“Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise:
And think how, night and day, Time onward Flies.”Opposite Noon is the advice, “Whilst we have time, do good.”

“Qvum Tempus Habemus, operemur bonum.
“Life steals away—this hour, O man, is lent thee
Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee.”

For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming—if taken literally.

“Redibo. Tu Nunquam.
“Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low;
He shall return again—but never Thou.”

The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this road!

The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.

Maud Heath’s charity is still in existence, and is now worth about £120 per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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