On the Margin
When working on a parish for the VCH, one of the first things to establish is its boundaries, because these define the parameters of the task in hand. Invisible, mystical things, boundaries – the Romans worshipped a god of boundaries, called Terminus, and held a festival for him, the Terminalia, each year on 23 February, which is next Friday. The Old Testament, too, is very strict about anyone who interferes with boundaries. When we wish to be obscure and smug, a VCH editor will say that parish A marches with parish B, because we know that an old meaning of ‘to march’ is ‘to share a boundary with’ – hence the Welsh Marches. I’ve done it myself, and no doubt mystified my readers, two parishes marching along together.
The Three Shire Stones
Any inland county will border several others, and there will come a place every now and then, if one traces its circumference, where three counties meet. Wiltshire has five such with its neighbours, mostly in obscure locations – a lonely glade in a valley of the Berkshire Downs, a millpond near Mere, a bridge over the Thames by Lechlade, a spot high up on Cranborne Chase. But one is commemorated by a monument, the Three Shire Stones. They look like a prehistoric cromlech, three megaliths topped by a fourth, though in fact they are a Victorian fantasy, and date from 1859. They mark the place where Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset meet (‘kiss’ even, another VCH peculiarity – or did I make that one up? No, see VCH Wilts XV, 295.).
The monument stands, mostly unnoticed by speeding traffic, beside the Roman Fosse Way, so is indubitably a site sacred to the great god Terminus, and I visited it recently. I have to confess that my mission was on behalf of Gloucestershire, not Wiltshire, as work will soon begin on Marshfield and its surroundings, and I have to scope the volume. Marshfield’s Wiltshire neighbour is Colerne, and it will be a lucky VCH historian who is employed one day to research that delectable parish. The threesome is completed by Batheaston, but I don’t think that is in VCH Somerset’s sights any time soon.
This quasi-numinous notion of threes is powerful. It is present in the Celtic religion of triads, and in the Greek triple-goddess Hecate, who presided not only over boundaries, but also road junctions, where three roads meet - a trivium - yes, that is ultimately where our word ‘trivial’ comes from. On a more prosaic, vernacular note, the countryman has always noted that there is something special about a place where you can stand with one foot in Wiltshire, one foot in Gloucestershire, and spit (or worse) into Somerset (or whichever way round betrays your allegiances).
The Three Shire Stones stands beside the minor road (part of the Fosse Way) between Batheaston and Ford, on the west side about equidistant from both places (ST 796 700). In its present form it dates from 1859, but it is built around an earlier setting of stones, each dated 1736 with the initial of its county. The larger cromlech, of three stones each 9 to 12 feet high and weighing between 4 and 5 tons, with a fourth on top, was built by public subscription at the behest of the local gentry at a cost of £34 5s. 8d. When the hole for the Gloucestershire stone was dug three skeletons and a coin of James II were discovered, suggesting another traditional use of a boundary, as a place for burying suicides and malefactors. For more information about the monument see Trans BGAS, 82 (1963), 210-11.
John Chandler- February 2024