A very remarkable feature of Chippenham is a paved track some four and a half miles in length, and still bearing curious inscriptions, leading northeastwards from the town to the ridge of Bremhill Wick. This path owes its existence to a bequest made by a certain Maud Heath, who lived as long ago as the fifteenth century, and the cost of the maintenance of the path at the present day is defrayed by the property she bequeathed for the purpose. Tradition says that Maud Heath was a market-woman of Langley Burrell, a village on the causeway; and if this is correct one imagines that the good dame left her money to save those that came after her the toil and discomfort of trudging with a heavy basket in the deep mire of the heavy clay of the valley. On the ridge where the path terminates stands a column bearing a statue of the woman, put up in 1838 by the Lord Lansdowne of that time—Bowood, the ancestral home of the Lansdownes, from which Rembrandt's 'Mill' has lately been sold and removed to America, being only two miles distant.
An undulating road goes almost due north to Malmesbury, passing through the hamlet of Corston, which has a small church with a curious Perpendicular bell-turret at the west end.
MALMESBURY
This interesting and historic town is comparatively unknown to the ordinary tourist. Its situation on a spur of raised ground, with two branches of the Avon almost surrounding it with a natural moat, made the place of importance in early days, when such things were eagerly sought after. One is not surprised, therefore, to find that the site was a stronghold of the British, known as Caer Bladon, and in Saxon times was a frontier town of Wessex. According to Murray, the present name is derived from Maidulph or Maldulph, an Irish missionary who, about the beginning of the seventh century, established a hermitage under the protecting proximity of the castle, and there began educational work among the semi-barbarous Saxons. One of his scholars was the learned Ealdhelm, who became the first abbot of the monastery of Malmesbury, founded in 680. Of the great religious house which eventually grew up at Malmesbury only the church remains, now, alas! sadly diminished and curtailed. Both the central and the western towers collapsed somewhere about the sixteenth century, crushing the adjoining parts of the nave and chancel in their fall. The existing church is therefore only a portion of the nave of the magnificent abbey church which dominated the little town in pre-Reformation times. The arcades are Transitional Norman with massive cylindrical pillars, but above the arches rises a Decorated clerestory, supporting a richly vaulted roof of the same period. If it had not been for Master Humpe, whom Leland describes as 'an exceeding riche Clothiar,' there would quite possibly have been nothing left at all of the abbey church after the suppression of the monasteries; but this worthy man bought the buildings from the Crown and presented the church to the parish. The old parish church was utilized as a town hall, but nothing remains of that structure except the tower, with a spire.
The beautiful Elizabethan house to the north-east of the abbey church is built on a portion of the monastic buildings in which Master Humpe had set up his looms. The famous historian, William of Malmesbury, who lived in the twelfth century, was librarian and precentor of the abbey. Before leaving the town the lovely Perpendicular market cross should be seen, and also the almshouses near St. John's Bridge.
Leaving Malmesbury by the Cirencester road, one soon goes to the right for Cricklade, skirting Charlton Park, with its dignified Jacobean house built by Sir Thomas Knyvet, with a west front designed, it is said, by Inigo Jones. It is the seat of the Earls of Suffolk and Berkshire. The present holder of the title was extra A.D.C. to Lord Curzon of Kedleston, and married, in 1904, a sister of the late Lady Curzon. The interior of the house has been modernized, but it contains a remarkably fine collection of old masters.
CRICKLADE
This prettily-situated little town is on the Thames, about ten miles from Thames Head, close to the Foss Way, St. Sampson's Church, with its pinnacled tower, rising picturesquely over the roofs half hidden among trees. It is a cruciform building, and the interior of the tower, which is enriched with armorial shields, contains a clock possessing no face on the exterior! In the churchyard there is a fine cross with niches in the head, and another is to be found in the churchyard of the little St. Mary's. Cricklade is one of those really ancient places whose beginnings are far off in British times, the origin of the name being the two British words cerrig (stone) and lád (ford).
From Cricklade one goes south-west as straight as an arrow for about four miles on the Roman Ermine Way leading from Cirencester (Corinium) to Speen (Spinæ), near Newbury. Then one goes to the left to Highworth, where the route turns due north and meets the Thames again at