Collectanea. 73
[The western end of St. Margaret's Road, Oxford, was formerly known as " Rackham's Lane," and at a still earlier date as "Greenditch."! It was here that the city gallows stood, and that executions were carried out at least from the fourteenth century.- A significant record of this custom is to be found in the name ' 'Scape Gallows Lane," which was also applied to this part of the road. An Oxford lady tells me that when she was a child the Devil was supposed to be heard at night rattling chains opposite the site of St. Margaret's Church ; and that she was once taken to the spot to listen for him, by people who had heard him them- selves. Another informant tells me (i 901) that it used to be said that the Devil walked at night in Cheyney Lane, on Headington Hill, just outside Oxford, and that he could be heard ratthng chains, hence the name of the lane. A man used to be seen here walking about with his head under his arm.]
IV. Traditions of Suicides.
Before the enclosure of Cowley Marsh and Ififley Parish, there was a road running eastwards at the point where Donnington Lane enters the high road from Ififley to Oxford at the Mile End, thus forming a four-cross road. Some hundred years ago it is said that a harness maker living in Oxford got into disgrace for selling stirrup-irons and bits of base metal as silver. He rode out to the crossways, and, tying his horse to a tree, shot himself. He was buried in the middle of the roads opposite where the deed was done. It is said that a skeleton was found here when the drainage works were going on about 1895. — (11 November, 1897.)
The place where the road from Stonesfield to Fawler meets the road from Northleigh and Ashford Mill, which continues north- wards as "The Ridgeway," is known as " Mary Hill's Grave," and it is said that one Mary Hill, a suicide, was buried here in the middle of the four roads with a stake through her body."*
' A. Wood, City of Oxford {OyS. Hist. Soc), i. 345-
- H. Hurst, Oxford Topography (Oxf. Hist. Soc), p. 23.
^ The name "Mary Hill's Grave" occurs at least as early as 1712, for Thomas Hearne, writing in his diary at that date, says, " There are divers Barrows (Danish Barrows) in and about the Parish of Stonesfield and other
places not far distant Mary Hill's Grave is between Fawler and
Stonesfield." T. Hearne, Collections, ed. by J. Doble (Oxf. Hist. Soc), iii.,
