From Bath to Chippenham the road goes through Batheaston, and keeping to the north side of the railway for a couple of miles, passes under it to reach the village of Box, which has given its name to one of the longest tunnels on the Great Western Railway. It is one and three-quarter miles in length, and cost more than half a million pounds to build. Box village has a church belonging to the three great periods of Gothic, with a Perpendicular tower.
Going to the left in the village, the road to Chippenham rises from the valley of the By Brook, crosses the ridge of oolite and fuller's earth pierced by the famous tunnel, and drops down to
CORSHAM
The little town lies chiefly to the right, towards the railway and Corsham Court, Lord Methuen's stately Elizabethan house. It is quite desirable to run through the place, returning to the Chippenham road by the road that skirts the park, north of the church. There are some old houses in the street, and among them one dating back as far as the fifteenth century. Corsham Court contains a magnificent collection of paintings, mostly brought here by Sir Paul Methuen, who was at one time Ambassador to Madrid, and died in 1757.
The beautiful cruciform church was shorn of its central tower during the restoration by Street, who built a new tower and spire in a rather unusual position south of the south transept. The Norman nave and a north door of the same period are the earliest portions of the building, and the Methuen Chapel, built in 1879, is the most recent.
From Corsham the road falls continuously to
CHIPPENHAM,
an old manufacturing town on the Avon. As its name suggests, it has been a market town from a very remote age. It was a place of importance in Saxon times, and one or two events are recorded as happening there before the year 878, when the Danes took the place and made it their headquarters, while, with fire and sword, they spread ruin and desolation over the neighbourhood. After Alfred reappeared from his hiding-place in marsh-bordered Athelney to the south-west, and gained his famous victory over the marauding Danes at Ethandune, he regained possession of Chippenham, and gave it to his daughter Ælfrith for life. For objects to connect the Chippenham of to-day with these thrilling times of half-civilized Britain one looks in vain, for the church, the most hopeful link, reveals no Saxon work, and what is Norman has been so cruelly handled that its interest has vanished. The richly-carved Norman chancel arch, dating from about half a century after the Conquest, has been recut and removed to the north side of the chancel.
The modern church of St. Paul was built in 1853 by Sir Gilbert Scott. A new Town Hall belongs to this period, but the old one is still standing.
MAUD HEATH'S CAUSEWAY