The poet enters a caveat that the latter do not act the part of an Iconoclast, as has too often been her wont. At least this appears to me to be the interpretation.
E. I. U. S. Club.
Grimsdyke or Grimesditch (Vol. iv., p. 192.).
—Your Querist NAUTICUS describes the vallum or ditch called "Grimsdyke, or Grimesditch, or the Devil's Ditch," running from Great Berkhampstead, Hants, to Bradenham, Bucks, and then puts two Queries.
NAUTICUS assumes that this ditch had, at some distant day, been an artificial earthwork; but at the same time he points out that, "from its total want of flank defence, it could hardly hold an enemy in check for long; and that it does not seem to have been a military way." He asks, "Are there other earthworks of the same name (Grimsdyke) in England?" I find no trace of any other earthworks of that name in England; and it may be very questionable whether this ditch be of ancient earthwork, or of its original natural formation.
But there is, in Cheshire, a brook or rivulet in its pristine state, called Grimsditch. This brook or rivulet is one of the contributory streams of Cheshire to the great rivers, the Mersey and the Weaver; and is described by the author of King's Vale Royal of England, or the County Palatine of Chester illustrated, published in 1656, as follows:
"The Grimsditch cometh from the Hall of Grimsditch, by Preston, Daresbury, Keckwith, and so falleth into the Marsey."
Here then we have the name of a place which gives the name of Grimsditch to the brook or rivulet; and it is, moreover, shown by the County History that the place (the hamlet or lands of Grimsditch) has been in the possession of a family of the name of Grimsditch from the time of Henry III.
From the words of the original grant this hamlet, by which Thomas Tuschet, in 10 Hen. III. 1226, grants to Hugo de Grimsditch "totam terram de Grimsdich pertinentem ad villam de Witeleigh" (Ormerod's Chesh. i. 488.), it may be inferred that the place went by the name of Grimsditch prior to the Norman Conquest. There can therefore be but little doubt that the name is of Anglo-Saxon origin.
The present possessor of the property is Thomas Grimsditch, Esq., late M.P. for the borough of Macclesfield.