acres, and Blackground about 4 acres--and passing east of the present
Badsey church, proceeded through Wickhamford, and by a well-defined
track to Hinton-on-the-Green, and on to Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

The occurrence of the name Salter Street gives a clue to one of the
original uses of the road, at any rate in Roman times, for salt was an
absolute necessity in those days, as may be gathered from a passage in
_The Natural History of Selborne_, written in 1778:

"Three or four centuries ago, before there were any
enclosures, sown grasses, field turnips, or field carrots,
or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and
were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after
Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months;
so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring.
Hence the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of
the elder Spencer in the days of Edward II., even so late in
the spring as the 3rd of May." A note adds that the store
consisted of "Six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef
and six hundred muttons."

It is not difficult to trace the route over which the salt was carried
from Droitwich. Starting thence the track can be approximately
identified by the names of places in which the root, _sal_ (salt),
occurs, and we find Sale Way, Salding, Sale Green, and, further south,
Salford. Crossing the Worcester-Alcelster road at Radford, and
proceeding through Rouse Lench and Church Lench, we reach Harvington,
from whence the track takes us across the low-lying meadows to the
ferry and ford over the Avon, near the Fish and Anchor Inn mentioned
above.