The 904 charter next refers to a Hedgerow in this area; this, perhaps, bounded the open land of Burrington Ham and so coincided with the manor boundary. The printed versions of the charter seem to differ slightly at this point, one giving "to the east of the Hedgerow", i.e., fo1lowing the boundary outside the hedge, on its eastern face; the other translates this brief word as "again, along the hedgerow", and adds it onto the next phrase of the charter (see below). There is a slight suggestion of a ditch in places along the Burrington Ham boundary; it continues to be backed by a bank and the later wall. The bank is in places up to 3' high, and where agate had been newly cut through it, the section appeared to display a stone core.

904: ...AGAIN, ALONG THE HEDGEROW TO WYTHESCOMBE. FROM THE COMBE TO BROKENANBRUGGE. FROM THE BRUGGE TO STANBRUGGE. FROM STANBRUGGE TO
WET MEADOW. FROM WET MEADOW TO WATERCOMBE.

We followed the boundary wall off the Ham, crossed over the main road at the top of Burrington Combe, and took the path to the west of Ellick House, up onto Blackdown.
At its junction with the road, there was a very good (modern) boundary stone with B.C. carved on one face: Burrington Commons Enclosure Act, 1913.

This next stretch of the boundary presented many problems of interpretation. The charter runs "along the hedgerow to Wythescombe". This must either be Burrington Combe - although it is in fact less obvious on the ground at the point where the boundary crosses it than would appear from the map. Grundy favours this interpretation. Altematively, we would suggest Wythescombe may be the valley, bounding the east side of Blackdown, in which Middle Ellick Farm is situated. The path following the parish and the 18th century map's manor boundary runs up one shoulder of this valley, and its upper end is virtually in the valley itself.

This identification of Wythescombe wou]d make it a much more integral part of the boundary, fitting the natural bounds of the land-bloc. A further suggestion is offered as to the actual meaning of Wythescombe, whichever valley is intended by it. Grundy's interpretation of "Wythes" as willows or alders is obviously quite unsuited to this high, dry limestone country. Surely Wythescombe is far more like]y to be a garbled or phonetic version of "Wethes-combe" : the sheep-valley. The manorial accounts have already referred to sheep pastured on Mendip; and Ellick (1516 Illewicke): el-wic, the little farm, or perhaps hill-wic, the hill farm, can be traced back at least to the 16th century as an outlying settlement probably based on this summer grazing. The three Ellick Farms are clustered around, and in, our postulated Wythescombe.

The present path runs along, or parallel to, the parish/manor boundary of our maps, up to the skyline, which, both on the maps and on the ground, is a distinctive dividing-line. It is a narrow bridge of land linking Blackdown with the Charterhouse plateau of Mendip, and forms a watershed sloping away both to Ellick on the north and to Cheddar on the south.

Just as we reached this saddle, and at the head of our "Wythescombe", the boundary passed over the centre of a round barrow. This is not mentioned in the charter; but its use as a landmark indicates that we are almost certainly on the correct ancient line of the boundary. It provides a convenient point at which to review the next, and puzzling, stretch of the boundary.

The Blackdown area was open common land, and presumably the boundary would not have needed the clear definition of fields, stream and family settlements which we had encountered earlier. The 1738-9 map boundary (see "Sources of Information" above) follows exactly the modern parish boundary, which takes in the whole of Blackdown in a series of straight lines and sharp angles which have to be accepted as unlikely to bear any relation to the Saxon charter. This 18th-20th century boundary is marked on the ground by a ditch and 3-4' bank topped with small hawthorns, a typical enclosure commissioners' layout. On the outer or south side, straight-sided enclosure-era fields run right up to this boundary; inside is the ancient, natural heathland of Blackdown.

If this tidy boundary is unlikely to correspond with the Saxon one, and the latter may well be vague in any case at this point, how are we to interpret the names in the charter? Grundy is little help at this point. Having accepted Wythescombe as Burrington Combe, he tries to force all the points between Brokenanbrugge and Watercombe within its length. Broken bridges and stone bridges are, furthermore, difficult to accept in this area.

Here Grundy does offer the alternatives of Broken-ridge and stone-ridge. If we accept this attempt to make sense of garbled mis-copyings of the original charter, we would like to venture one further suggestion: that the ridge is not "broken" at all, but covered with "bracken", a perfectly good Saxon word itself, and no more vague than the Fern-ham and Thistledene of elsewhere in the charter; it is, moreover, completely in character with the landscape. Finally, our clue that Grundy is mistaken in trying to place all these points in Burrington Combe is the appearance of Watercombe in the 1298 Perambulation, and its identification as the upper end of Rowberrow Valley, south of Holloway Rocks. This must mean that all the points which preceded it in our charter are somewhere on Blackdown between Ellick and Rowberrow Warren.

Our interpretation is that the 904 Saxon boundary simply runs westward along the large, rounded spine of Blackdown itself: a spine which in fact extends west to form the bluff immediately above Rowberrow Valley-alias-Watercombe, although this is now much obscured by forestry plantations.

Following this interpretation, Bracken-ridge might well be the distinctive watershed which we had reached and noted above Ellick and marked by the round barrow on the boundary. In the centre of this ridge, where a cart-track runs east towards the Harptree radio-masts and Charterhouse, a boundary stone is marked on the O.S. maps; but this we could not find. From this point the parish and the 18th century manor boundary run south for about 500 yards through hill-bog, and then turn sharply to the west.

In the corner is a small enclosed patch marked on the 1738-9 map as "Gallows Tump". As this is the junction of three parishes, it could possibly be the site of a communal gallows; although it was more likely to be a beacon or "galley", the view to the south being magnificent. The patch is much overgrown, and there do not seem to be any structural remains. A fine "tump", obligingly close at hand, turned out to be merely the remains of a World War II anti-aircraft gunsite.

The party, however, left this bog-ridden modern boundary and followed instead the suggested 904 boundary across Black down. Keeping to the natural "spine" of the higher ground took us from the watershed of Bracken-ridge, up to the barrows on top of Black down. These barrows, which might well originally have been more obviously heaped up with stones than they are now, offer some indication of the "Stone-ridge" of the charter.

Perhaps there was once something more impressive still, associated with this ancient burial ground. F. A. Knight, in his books on the area, suggests that Stanton Drew circle or the Waterstone Dolmen are surely only survivors of what must once have been many more "ancient stones", whether deliberately set up or exposed through time and weathering. The monoliths at Locking Manor, and the many large, rough gate-posts in the area, must have come from somewhere! At this point, on the top of Blackdown, we stopped for tea in incredibly summery sunshine. The angular modern boundary, meanwhile, ran across the lower slopes of Black down below us, to form a sharp angle in the extreme southwest corner of the manor.

We, following the spine of Blackdown down towards this same point, squelched through peat-bogs which must surely have been the "Wet meadow" that follows Stone-ridge in the charter. The meadows above Tynings Farm, where the ground is less obscured with long grass and bracken, can be seen to be, in fact, running with water in places. The 1738-9 map marks the "Bristol Road to Cheddar" crossing Blackdown at this point, having come up the gully past Goatchurch cavern; but no sign of it survives on the ground today.

We rejoined the 18th-20th century map boundary at the southwest corner; right on the edge, although we could not see it for trees, of the next point in the charter: Watercombe of 904 and of 1298. At the edge of this steep valley, the boundary of the manor and the parish turns northwards.

904: ...FROM WATERCOMBE TO ETHECOMBE.

The next point in the charter, Ethecombe or Heath-combe, is identified (from its relationship to the subsequent point of Hilsbrook Spring, and with the corroboration of the 1065 Banwell charter: see below) as the small, very steep valley immediately on the east side of Mendip Lodge Wood. On the 1738-9 map this is called Crosses Combe. The manor and parish boundary, in 1738-9 and today, links the two points by striking north in a fairly straight line, touching Read's Cavern, and turning east round Mendip Lodge Wood to Crosses Combe.

The Saxon charter provides no helpful clues as to how Watercombe and Heathcombe were linked in 904. There is nothing in the 904 charter to suggest that the boundary went down Watercombe: it simply goes "to" it. If it had done so, one would expect additional landmarks in the Holloway Rocks and Dolebury area to be necessary, as in the Banwell Charter and the Perambulation. There is no reason why the Saxon boundary should not have turned at Watercombe and taken a basically similar route to the present boundaries, to Heathcombe. Being still in open heathland (vide "Heath"combe) it may well have wandered more round the natural contours of west Black down, somewhat to the west of the present boundary. Certainly the landscape at this point is being so rapidly altered by forestry work that it is hard to find any traces even of the 18th century boundary.

About 300 yards from the southwest corner we were, however, lucky enough to find a boundary stone, covered in long grass. It is one of two shown, quite close together, on the O.S. map. On the west face was carved a crude "R ", showing the Rowberrow side of the boundary. We searched for the other stone; but it has probably been dug up or buried in the course of erecting modern fencing. Nor did we see any sign of the mearstones which were requested, in 1738, to be set up at the head of Watercombe (i.e., the southwest corner) and at Read's Cavern (see paper, Manorial Court Papers, 1733-1757). We, and the boundary, then dropped down a small but steep valley leading off the northwest shoulder of Blackdown to Read's Cavern; the charter boundary, if following the natural contours, would have arrived in this valley as well.

Read's Cavern, lurking under its little crag, fits exactly the "Foxhole" marked on the 1738-9 map. F. A. Knight ("Heart of Mendip") knew it as "Fox Hole" early in this century. Here the boundary turns east, and is once again marked by a - some-what delapidated -stone wall. At this point also the 904 Wrington charter is "partnered" by the 1065 Banwell charter; though as it is progressing in the opposite direction, its contribution is discussed below. We followed the path that runs parallel to the wall, past Bos Swallet and Rod's Pot, until the wall plunged down Crosses-alias-Heath Combe - which seemed much steeper on the ground than one would expect from the map - and we took the path off Black down back to the bottom of Burrington Combe.

Walk V: Saturday 2nd April, 1966. Burrington to Wrington.

904: ...FROM ETHECOMBE TO ELKANLEGH. FROM ELKANLEGH TO HYLISBROOK TO THE GREAT SPRING.

Walks V-VII covered, approximately, the second half of our boundary circuit, which in general is simpler since it is either plainly recognisable, or impossible for us to identify at all.

The afternoon proved grey and chilly, and a brisk start was made from the bottom of Burrington Combe, taking a small lane which soon brought us to the bottom of Crosses Combe, the Heath Combe of the 904 charter. From the bottom it appeared very steep indeed, and the boundary wall, standing quite high, came down its centre. The charter now directs us to Elkanlegh and Hilsbrook. Elkanlegh, "Elkan-clearing-in-the-woods", must be the stretch of boundary which runs along the north edge of Mendip Lodge Wood: a gentle hill slope with several signs of lynchets and old field boundaries suggesting such clearing for agriculture.

An angle in the boundary as shown on the maps, proves on the ground to be one of these old field banks. The 1738-9 map calls this Sunninghall Hill; Mendip Lodge was not built until 1787. There is quite a pronounced, flat-topped bank with ditch along the edge of the wood, with occasional large stones showing through its surface.

The boundary runs along the hill to "The Great Spring" at Hilsbrook; but lack of gates forced us to make a detour and approach the spring by the foot-path from the road. This Great Spring in some ways resembles the Rickford Spring; suddenly appearing a considerable size, it probably rises from one of the Blackdown caves. Such a large and distinctive pool, in its own steep little combe, was obviously a landmark of note; although the name only now survives in the house situated much further downstream, on the outskirts of Lower Langford. Hilsbrook proper is now the more prosaic Upper Langford.

Hilsbrook appears in the Banwell charter of 1065, and it is at this point easiest to see how the Banwell charter serves to confirm the earlier identification of Heathcombe. Having arrived at "the large spring of Hillsbrook" on their side of the boundary, the Banwell surveyors proceed in the opposite direction to us, "east to the combe and all round Losa Lea", i.e., east along the hillside the way we had just come, to Crosses/Heath combe, and round Mendip Lodge Wood, "and so west to the combe" to go westwards along the other side of the Wood and down Dolebury Warren, on towards Churchill Rocks, Winscombe and Sandford.

904: ...THEN ALONG THE BROOK ONCE MORE TO THE WRING. The next stage of our perambulation was easily identified. We followed the Hilsbrook stream to Upper, thence to Lower Langford, by field paths; and from Lower Langford we took the lane to Wrington, which runs parallel to the stream and one field away from it. Just north of Upper Langford we noticed the remains of what looked to have been a well constructed mill-lade, with masonry sluice gates, although there was no sign of a building. At Kitland Lane we rejoined the stream, called Hunts or Hunters Brook on the 1738-9 map, and Langford Brook today, and followed its eastern bank as far as its junction with the "Wring", the River Yeo.

This was a long plod through the very cold and misty drizzle that had now set in. The Banwell charter of 1065, meanwhile, had been following the brook in the reverse direction, " ...to the Wrinnaest Stream (i.e. the east part of the Wring), on till it comes to Hillsbrook, up till it comes to the large spring". This junction between the two by now quite impressive streams, the Langford Brook and the River Yeo, provided the next boundary point on our charter, and a suitable end to our walk.