ALDERMINSTER. 11

dingle, called Jumper's Hole, near here, are marks in a slab of sandstone, to which is attached the legend of St. Catharine's mare and colt. A person, said to be a girl with a pair of pattens on, having stolen the said mare and colt, and led them down several brooks to avoid detection, the saint, upon being informed of her loss, grayed that wherever the animals and thief trod, the marks of their feet might be left; and that in answer to this prayer the prints of the animals' feet, and also of the patten rings, were deeply indented, not only in the earth, but also in the stones wherever they trod, and thereby they were traced to and found at Ledbury. Unfeeling geologists explain these marks, which appear in the brooks hereabout, by saying that nodular concretions had been washed out of the stone.

Alderminster.

OTHERWISE Aldermaston, is a parish almost surrounded by Warwickshire, in the Shipston district, and midway between Shipston and Stratford. It belonged to Pershore Abbey until after the Dissolution, when Henry VIII gave it to Nicholas Throckmorton, and next it fell by marriage to one Mr. Parthrick. Temp. Elizabethae it had twenty-three families, and there is now a population of 520, with an acreage of 3,168. It is a discharged vicarage in the gift of the Lord Chancellor; the great tithes have been commuted for £188. 4s., and those of the incumbent for £160.19s.; the glebe comprises twenty acres in the parish and three and a half in Bengeworth; vicar, Rev. C. M. Tompson; value of living returned at £166. The greater part of the property in the parish belongs to J. R. West, Esq., of Alscot Park, who has lately much improved the dwellings of the labouring classes of the parish by building some ornamental