334 CICETER IN SIGHT CH. XII and established pronunciation, takes us to Park Corner, where the inn once stood at which Wildgoose and Tugwell, on their tramp from Gloucester to Bath, fell in with Lord Bathurst's friendly and hospitable keeper. For their exploits on this occasion, their sojourn at "the old Gothic building" in the Park, which "his Lordship used to say he could have built as old again, if he had had a mind," and their encounter with the learned Virtuoso, together with the dissertation of the latter on the advantages of antiquarian pursuits, I must refer the curious reader to the Fourth Book of Mr. Graves's Comic Romance. There is no inn for us at Park Corner now, but another half dozen miles will bring us safely to our destination. The road traverses a delightful, heathy and woodland tract, and then drops down to Daglingworth, where we are on familiar ground once more. We soon join Ermin Street at the well-known corner, and now the beacon tower of Ciceter, looming large above the rising mists of the chill autumn evening, is our signal that one more day of our Cotswold pilgrimage has been brought to a successful conclusion. CICETER, before the rise of Cheltenham the third town in the county, and from the historic point of view still entitled to that rank, has not without good reason been styled the "Capital of the Cotswolds." True, it lies on the very edge of the hills, just where they begin to fade away into the great alluvial plain that stretches southwards to the chalk downs of Wessex, and takes its name from the great Saxon emblem carved upon the hill-side of Uffington. But in spirit as well as in appearance, the town belongs to the hills rather than to the plain. Let the visitor who has followed us in our rambles from Stow (and by this time the genius loci should be to him as a familiar friend) take his stand in the clean, wide market-place, and, as he looks around him at the substantial stone-built houses, say whether he does not feel himself still to be in a Cotswold town. As for the past here is the stately church to remind us once more of the great wool-staplers; and, for the present, where will you find finer samples of Cotswold wheat and Cotswold barley than in Ciceter market on a Monday? For, after all, as even Mr. Rider 336 CICETER CHAP. Haggard admits, the agricultural outlook in Gloucestershire is not so bad as it is in many other counties: there are still great flock masters, and large corn growers, within a dozen miles of Ciceter, whose names are no secret throughout the markets of the whole district, and there are even signs that the Cotswold wool, long superseded by the finer foreign growths, may once more contribute to the clothing of mankind. Mr. Apperley, of Stroud, who is both sheep-farmer and mill-owner, has discovered a method of softening the native wool, and has succeeded in weaving from it a cloth which need not fear comparison with some of the finest fabrics of the Yorkshire looms. Altogether, there are few towns in England where farming, both in theory and practice, is so much in evidence as in Ciceter. And the future agriculturist is caught young: there is the ancient grammar school founded by John Chedworth, one of a Cotswold family with a Cotswold name, Bishop of Lincoln in 1460, and re-founded a few years ago on a new site, and with new buildings, as the County Technical School. Here, in addition to the ancient Trivia and Quadrivia, or its modern representatives, youth is taught the elements of all the sciences subservient to the tilling of the soil; while for the more advanced student there is the Royal Agricultural College, founded in 1845 under the patronage of the Prince Consort, and famous throughout the most distant quarters of the globe. As everybody interested in farming knows, it has its own farm of four hundred acres, where all the details of farming operations on the most scientific principles may be studied in actual operation. No wonder then that-though the former industries of the place have declined, including the famous Curriers' knives, once almost a monopoly, and, like the old Toledo blades, in high repute from one end of Europe to the other-there is an under-current of innovation, and a sensitiveness to new ideas and new methods, manifest beneath the placid and dignified exterior of the aristocratic and conservative old country town. Apart from farming, it is as a hunting centre that Ciceter is XIV FAMOUS HUNTING PACKS 337 best known to the world at large. To this attraction it owes many of its permanent residents, and a fair sprinkling of hunting men take up their temporary quarters here for the winter. Long ago the dwellers in these hills hunted to live, and if any of their descendants now live to hunt-well, they might live for a far worse object. The man whose pocket and stable are full, may, if he chooses, ride to hounds every day of the week. In 1886 the famous old Vale of White Horse pack, so dear to Tom Brown, was divided into two. Mr. Miller, of Cricklade, hunts the eastern division of the old country, and Lord Bathurst the part round Ciceter. On Tuesday and Friday you may hunt with the home pack, and on Thursday and Saturday with the Cricklade. On Monday the Badminton pack are always on this side of their country, while on Wednesday the Cotswold meet is sure not to be very far off. For "further information" I must refer the courteous reader to Mr. Gibbs's chapter in the book already quoted, where he will find the whole subject elaborated by one who knew the country well, and was a genuine lover of the sport. In the annals of Ciceter it has been naturally the Roman period which has proved most attractive to its historians. Yet the history of that period has to be based entirely upon the labours of the spade and pick-axe; of documentary evidence there is none, and so completely was the Romano-British town destroyed by the Saxon conquerors after their victory at Dyrham in 577, and so long did it lie waste after its destruction, that the very streets are now laid down on quite different lines. There is no proof that anything like a town existed here before Roman times, and the excavations that have been made here and there into the Roman city which now underlies the modern Ciceter seem to indicate that, like Bath and Silchester, it was not primarily a military station. Like its successor it probably served both as a centre of urban life and as a market town for the surrounding population. Fortified, so far as circumvallation goes, of course Ꮓ |