MAIDEN-BRADLEY, a parish partly in the hundred
of NORTON-FERRIS, county of SOMERSET, but chiefly
in that of MERE, county of WILTS, 5 miles (N. byW.)
from Mere, containing, with the hamlet of Yarnfield,
620 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual curacy, in
the archdeaconry and diocese of Salisbury, endowed
with £600 private benefaction, £200 royal bounty, and
£1200 parliamentary grant, and in the patronage of
the Dean and Canons of Christ Church, Oxford. The
church, dedicated to All Saints, contains some monuments
of the Seymour family, particularly a finelyexecuted
one to Sir Edward Seymour, Bart., of political
celebrity in the reigns of Charles II., William and
Mary, and Anne. At the north-eastern extremity of the
village are the remains, now forming part of a farmhouse,
of an hospital, founded by Manasser Bisset, in the
reign of Henry II., and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin,
for poor leprous women, under the care of some Secular
brethren; but Herbert, Bishop of Sarum, about 1100,
substituted for the latter a prior and canons of the
Augustine order, whose revenue, at the dissolution, was
estimated at £197. 18. 8.: the situation is very romantic,
and there are numerous sites of ponds in the vicinity.
There are two singular knolls of chalk, which
appear to have been detached by a convulsion of nature
from Mere down, distant three quarters of a mile, the.
intervening soil having no tendency to chalk.