Talk:Box, Wiltshire

Copied from other website?

A good majority of the information in this article was copied from a website. I have removed all of that and started from scratch. I'd appreciate it if somebody could find the population density and total area of Box, Wiltshire for the article. Once we have that, we can start including more detailed information regarding the villiage. --Randy 11:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unexplained deletion

The following was deleted earlier today without explanation. I am keeping a copy here in case someone wants to work it back into the article in future.

The ‘big house’ in Box parish is Hazelbury Manor which was purchased by the Speke family in the early 17th century and passed to the Northey family in the early 18th century. By 1920 it had been bought by George Kidston who restored the manor house to much of its 16th century state of architecture and also wrote a book on the history of the manor. Rudloe Manor is a late 17th century house with a medieval barn, while Cheney Court at Ditteridge is from the early to mid 17th century being on the site of a 15th century manor house of the Cheneys and rebuilt for George Speke. It was owned by the Northey family in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ashley House was built around 1840 but Ashley Manor House is 17th century with earlier origins, while Alcombe Manor has medieval origins but is now mainly late 17th or early 18th century. The earliest settlement dates from well before the arrival of the Romans during the 1st Century AD. They stayed until the 5th to 7th centuries. Whilst here, they built a magnificent villa complex around the abundant fresh water springs.

Stone was quarried here in the 8th Century and by the end of the 19th century, the Box stone quarries were among the most productive in the world.

Although Box is not mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086, Ditteridge is and it is here that the oldest building in the Parish is situated - St. Christopher’s Church. The railway line that so affected the development of the village still carries heavy through traffic from London to Bath and beyond. Regrettably, trains no longer stop in Box.

Box nestles on the southern slope of the ByBrook valley. Much of Box Village and the surrounding area is a Conservation Area and falls within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Box still has a collection of small businesses, but these are rapidly closing down as owners sell up and the properties are converted to, or sold for, housing. House values are high. In contrast, more and more residents are working from home, especially in the entertainment business.

--Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 23:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Greek, my eye

Removed this sentence:

Bosc... and by metathesis Box... derive ultimately from Greek boskein, to feed animals, principally with the seeds or mast of beech trees (Latin Fagus sylvatica, itself from Greek phagein to eat).

This has provoked me to read up a bit on the etymology of bosc and bush. Medieval Latin boscus was used for 'woodland pasture'; Carl Darling Buck's Synonyms (1949) says, "It is now taken by many as a loanword from Germanic, instead of conversely as formerly. Of other views, the derivation from Greek boskê 'fodder' with transfer to 'pasture' is semantically most attractive." The American Heritage Dictionary of 1981 (sorry I haven't got a more recent etymological dictionary) tentatively attributes Germanic busk to Proto-Indo-European bheu meaning 'grow'.

The PIE roots of beech and Greek phag– 'eat' do strongly resemble each other, but are listed separately. Only in Greek does the latter mean 'eat'; its cognates in Persian and Sanskrit mean 'give' or 'apportion', it says here. Hm.

There being no beeches in Greece proper (according to Buck), Greek used the phag root for the oak, but Italic, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic all kept it for the beech. If the two phag roots are unrelated, perhaps the edible acorn attracted them to each other in Greek. —Tamfang (talk) 04:09, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

To put all that another way: whether or not it's true that either bosc or beech has a Greek origin, it's not helpful. For the present context, busk and beech are enough. —Tamfang (talk) 09:23, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

References