EDITORIAL NOTE

The present volume, the twelfth in the Wiltshire series to be published, has been prepared like its predecessors under the superintendence of the Wiltshire Victoria County History Committee. The origin and early constitution of the Committee were described in the Editorial Note to the Victoria History of Wiltshire, Volume VII. In 1975 the Committee adopted a new constitution and a new system of management, under which it provides the funds for the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London to employ the Wiltshire Editor and Assistant Editors and to meet other necessary expenses. The District Councils of Kennet, Salisbury, North Wiltshire, and West Wiltshire were invited to join the Wiltshire County Council and Thamesdown District Council in contributing to the funds and in sending representatives to the Committee. Each of them has done so, and the University has pleasure in expressing its gratitude to all those Local Authorities and to the Committee for their generous co-operation in enabling it to continue publication of the Wiltshire History.

Group Captain F. A. Willan, C. B.E., D.F.C., D.L., Chairman of the Wiltshire County Council, has continued as Chairman of the Committee. Miss Elizabeth Crittall, Assistant Editor from 1948 when full-time work on the Wiltshire History began and Editor from 1955, retired at the end of July 1977. Dr. D. A. Crowley, formerly Assistant Editor, succeeded her, and in May 1978 Miss Jane Freeman became Assistant Editor.

Thanks are rendered to many people who have helped in the compilation of the volume by granting access to documents and buildings in their care or ownership, by giving information, or by offering advice. Many are named in the footnotes or in the preamble to the List of Illustrations. The death in 1978 of Mr. R. E. Sandell, Honorary Librarian of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society and a long-standing member of the Wiltshire Victoria County History Committee, to whose knowledge and friendly assistance this volume, like earlier ones, owes very much, is recorded with great regret. Special mention must also be made of the help given in many ways by the Wiltshire County Archivist and his staff both at Trowbridge and in Salisbury, by the Hampshire County Archivist and her staff, by the Librarian of Winchester cathedral (the Revd. Canon F. Bussby), and by the Archivist of Winchester College (Mr. Peter Gwyn).

An outline of the structure and aims of the series as a whole, as also of its origins and progress, is included in the General Introduction to the Victoria History (1970).