three exceptions to the former; the capitals of the pier nearest the porch, and of the eastern responds being carved with somewhat of the spirit of an earlier and better time.

The choice of subject, (the bladder fucus) and the true expression given to its characteristics evince a better spirit than that expressed by the wood-carver at Mullion.

Of the remaining churches, few are worth noticing; many are either modern, or so completely modernised that for all archæological purposes they are valueless. There is one building, however, which is so different from anything in the two Deaneries, and is in itself such an admirable study of what can be effected by very simple means, that I have reserved it for the close of these notices, to plead my excuse for the prolixity with which it is possible I may be charged. The tower and spire of ST. HILARY was fortunately preserved during the destructive fire which a few years since swept away the body of the church. During the rebuilding, fragments of an early church of the same age as the tower (c. 1300) were discovered among the débris of the Debased and Perpendicular work; I give details of one of these, probably one of the capitals of the nave arcades.

A very marked peculiarity of this tower is its entasis, and the emphatic manner in which everything is made to diminish. When I visited the church in 1852, the west doorway was recessed the whole thickness of the wall, so as to form a sunk porch, there being outer and inner arches

as shown in the plan: this feature is now unfortunately destroyed. Some few "restoration" touches have been given to the spire, but this portion, I believe, remains very much in its architecturally original condition.

INSIDE

4-ű

Jamb of West Doorway.

I am sorry that the sketch of this tower is so rough; the details will, however, tend to explain it.

The tower is about 18 feet square at the base, and the buttresses have well graduated and bold bases in the form of ordinary set-offs. The churchyard is peculiarly rich in vestiges of earlier times. Besides the remains of medieval work already mentioned, there are two large inscribed stones, one, of very singular design, found three feet below the base of the north-east respond, the other in the groin of the west wall of the north aisle.

It is worthy of remark that in Norfolk, in the extreme east of England, the Perpendicular style met with a very similar kind of treatment to that which it received in the extreme west of

Cornwall. There is this difference, however, that, while the later Decorated, or even Flamboyant, exercised consider able influence over the former, it was the early Decorated, or Geometrical, that controlled the latter. This absence of what is emphatically the English style, which reached to such perfection in the intermediate counties, would alone be sufficient to indicate strong continental influence. Nearly every feature, however, tends to point in a similar direction. Are then the peculiarities of ground-plan owing to some local cause, some Cornish ritual arrangement, or are they to be traced to the country from whence the architecture is most distinctly derived?

21, Portland Square, Bristol.

EDWARD WILLIAM GODWIN,

ARCHITECT.

Since the above has been in the press, Grade Church has been razed to the ground. In taking it down the rood-loft stairs were discovered, as I had anticipated, in the thickness of the angle of the wall. In the progress of the work it was ascertained that the north wall of the nave was of the thirteenth century, a single lancet and a small doorway being revealed within the surface of the wall; this shows that the nave in all probability constituted the whole of the original church, and would give proportions and form similar to those of the early churches of St. Ruan in its immediate neighbourhood, and which are founded on the simple oratory plan.

The Central Committee desire to acknowledge the kind and liberal assistance of the Author of the foregoing Memoir, in contributing a moiety of the cost of the interesting illustrations by which it is accompanied, and which have been executed from his spirited drawings.

TRACES OF HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY IN THE LOCAL NAMES

IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

BY THE REV. JOHN EARLE, M.A.,

Late Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.1

GLOUCESTERSHIRE, in the Saxon form GLEAUCEASTRESCIRE (Sax. Chron. c. 1016), and in Domesday GLOWEC'SCIRE, is so called from the town of Gloucester, which occurs in the Chronicles under 577, in the form GLEAWANCEASTER. This Saxon form is divisible into GLEAWAN, or GLEAU, which represents the GLEVUM or GLEBON of the Ravenna geographer, and the Saxonised Latin word CEASTER, a city. The same meaning was expressed in British by KAIR GLOU, which is given in Nennius, cap. 54. The form in use by Latin writers was, for the city, Glaworna or Glavorna, and for the district, Glawornensis provincia.

Gloucestershire is in the form of an ellipse, more acute at the north-east end. It is divided by nature into three distinct regions. 1st. The Cotswold, or hill country, is the eastern part, which may be separated from the rest by a line drawn from Clifford Chambers to Lansdown. The name has been derived from British Coed, wood, and Saxon, weald, which may mean much the same, the one being an addition to interpret the other. 2nd. The vale of Severn, the land of cheese, of cider, and of perry. 3rd. The Forest of Dean, the anomaly of the county, which, according to geographical symmetry, ought to have been bounded by the Severn. This district is called by Giraldus "Danubia" and "Danica sylva," by which he means "Danes' wood." But the name of the forest is probably attributable to the Saxon dene-a valley, which we see repeated in that district, e. g., Mitchell Dean, alias Deane Magna; Little Dean; Ruardean. Each of these three natural divisions is extolled by Drayton in his Poly-Olbion. Of the first, he has,-"Cotswold, that

1 Communicated to the Historical Section at the Annual Meeting of the Institute at Gloucester, July, 1860.