"Urbs in colle sita est, et collis vergit ad austrum".
N.B. One of the Abbey fields at Bullington, a few miles east of Lincoln, is known as the Hopyard. The plant has never been cultivated in these parts within memory, or the range of the faintest tradition, but the character of the soil is clayey, and perhaps not unsuitable. Were hopyards often attached to monasteries? The house at Bullington was of the order of Sempringham.
B.
Lincoln.
Countess of Desmond (Vol. iii., p. 250.).—If your correspondents on this subject should be wandering to the south-east of London, they may be interested in knowing that there are two very striking portraits of this lady in Kent, one at Knowle, near Seven Oaks; the other, which is the more remarkable picture of the two, at Bedgebury, near Cranbrook, the seat of Viscount Beresford.
E. H. Y.
St. John's Bridge Fair (Vol. iii., pp. 88. 287.).—I cannot agree with the conjecture that this was Peterborough Bridge Fair. On the confines of Gloucestershire and Berkshire, at the distance of about 77 miles from London, near Lechlade, and on the road to Farringdon, is a St. John's Bridge, near which was a priory or hospital. It is at this place that the Thames first becomes navigable. (Leland's Itinerary, vol. ii. fo. 21, 22, 23; vol. iv. fo. 48; Bowles's Post Chaise Companion, 1782, pl. 28; Lysons' Berkshire, vol. i. p. 193., and map of county prefixed; Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i. p. 320.; Parliamentary Gazetteer, art. "Lechlade.") Whether there is or ever was a fair at this place is more than I can state; but perhaps some of your correspondents dwelling in those parts can give information on this point.
C. H. Cooper.
Cambridge, April 14. 1851.
Paring the Nails unlucky on Sundays (Vol. ii., p. 511.; Vol. iii, p. 55.).—Compare Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, lib. v. cap. xxi. § x.