Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/439

 s. ix. MAY si, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

431

Ecton's 'Thesaurus' and other eighteenth- century documents, Kitnor, on the north coast of Somerset between Porlock and Lynton. This latter is out of the way of the tourist, and, though often seen by stag- hunters, has been quite overlooked by archaeologists. It is locally said that the parson of Culbone can stand in his pulpit and shake hands with all his congregation. For a complete parish church, steeple and all, it is much the smallest I have ever seen, and one feature in it has, so far as I am aware, never been made public : it has on the south- east side, low down, a window, now walled up, which can have had no other purpose than that of the well-known leper window of the Middle Ages.

The seating accommodation in Culbone Church, to the best of my recollection, is limited to six oak benches, of probably fourteenth-century date, on each of which no more than two persons can find room.

Much of thequaintness of this very curious little church has, within the writer's recol- lection, been destroyed by a new road and sundry new adjoining buildings, but those who have seen it, even as it is, will have no doubt as to which is the smallest parish church in England. Still it is to be desired that exact plans and measurements should be taken of any church for which supremacy in minuteness is claimed.

F. T. ELWORTHY.

To the list furnished by MR. PAGE I would add Mappleton Church, Derbyshire, a tiny place of worship served from Ash bourne and situate about a couple of miles from the entrance to lovely Dovedale ; also the small church which stands within the grounds of Okeover Hall almost on the lawn, indeed in the same village. Close to the picturesque old house lie buried many ancestors of the honoured family of Okeover. I think the rector of Blore, not far distant, holds the services in this little edifice.

CECIL CLARKE.

Junior Athenaeum Club.

The churches of Mardale, at the head of Ha wes water, and of Swindale in the next valley are both as small as, or smaller than, that at Wastdale Head. Mardale is a chapelry in the parishes of Bampton and Shap, and the church is said to have been built by Holm to serve as an oratory ; the old oak beams of the roof have obviously been trimmed with the axe, not cut with the saw. Swindale, also in Shap parish, is of much more recent date, and adjoining it at one end is the building where is still carried on

the old grammar school, founded by Richard Baxter in 1703. M. E. NOBLE.

The same claim is, or used to be, made for the church at Wythburn. When I told this to the Rev. Mr. Pigott, the "eccentric" vicar of Burnthwaite, some thirty years ago, his reply was that of the Sacristan in the * In- goldsby Legends.' C. C. B.

MR. J. T. PAGE, I am afraid, can never have seen Grosmont Church. Instead of it being a very small church, it is a church " of unusual size, consisting of nave, aisles, tran- sept, and chancel " (Murray's * Soutli Wales,' 1890, p. 75). If I remember rightly, the nave is not used, and when I was there it was screened off from the rest of the church by means of a wood and glass partition.

G. F. R. B

" IN AN INTERESTING CONDITION " (9 th S. IX.

328). As applied to a woman enceinte this expression occurs at the end of the last chapter of 'Roderick Random': "My dear angel has been qualmish of late, and begins to grow remarkably round in the waist, so that I cannot leave her in such an interest- ing condition [?] " But "happy and grace- ful," and all that is requisite, as the phrase may be, one of a still more reserved nature has to some extent apparently superseded it. A woman is now often said to be " in a deli- cate state of health," with sometimes the addition of "owing to an interesting event being expected." The young Queen Wil- helmina of Holland was, I think, thus, before her illness, alluded to in the newspapers. Older far, however, even than being " in the family way," is to be "in the straw," from the days when straw was almost the only material used for beds an expression equiva- lent to the more general one of being "brought to bed "i.e., "ofachild." "Brought to bed" occurs as early as the fourteenth century. See the l H.E.D.,' s.v. ' Bed.'

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

The last words of Smollett's 'Roderick Random' (1748), referring to the condition of health of the hero's wife, are, " I cannot leave her in such an interesting situation [?], which, I hope, will produce something to crown my felicity." GEORGE PRICE.

31, Paignton Road, Birmingham.

GOLF (9 th S. ix. 349).- The question as to the derivation of "golf" from the Icelandic equivalent for pavimentum was raised by Pinkerton in a note in his edition of the 'Maitland Poems.' "Is it not, he said, "from Golf, Isl. mvimentum, because it is played in the level fields ? Perhaps the game