we find that a farm-houfe and two barns were built to the fouth
of the Priory, and Undoubtedly out of it’s materials. ' Avarice
again has much contributed to the overthrow of this {lately pile, as
long as the tenants could make money of it’s {tones or timbers.
Wantonnefs, no doubt, has had a'{hare In the demolition , for
/ boys love to deflroy what men venerate and admire. A remarkable
inftance of this propenfity the writer can give from his own
knowledge. When a fchoolboy, more than fifty years ago, he
was eye-witnefs, perhaps a party concerned, in the undermining a
portion of that-fine old ruin at the north end of Bafingjloke town,
well known by the name of Holy Ghojl Chapel. Very providentially
the vaft fragment, which thefe thoughtlefs little engineers endeavoured
to fap, did not give way fo foon as might have been ex-
pefted; but it fell the might following, and with fuch violence
that it fhook the «very ground, and, awakening the inhabitants
of the neighbouring cottages, made them flare up in their
beds as if they had felt an earthquake. The motive for this, dangerous
attempt does not fo readily appear : perhaps the more
danger the more honour, thought the boys; and the notion of
doing fame mifchief gave a zefe to the enterprise. As Dtyden fays
upon an other occafion,
“ It look’d fo like a fin It pleas’d the more.”
Had the Priory been only levelled to the furface of the ground,
■ the difceming eye Of an antiquary might have afcertained it’s
• ichnography, and fome judicious hand might have developed its
•dimerifions. But, befides other ravages,’4he very foundations have
been torn up for the repair of the highways : fo that the fite of
«this convent is now become a rough, -rugged pafture-field, full of
hillocks
hillocks and pits, choaked with nettles, and dwarf-elder, and
trampled by the feet of the ox and the heifer.
As the tenant at the Priory was lately digging among the
foundations, for materials to mend the highways, his labourers
difeovered two large Hones, with which the farmer was fo pleafed
that he ordered them to be taken out whole.. One of thefe proved
to be a large Doric capital, worked in goodtafte; and the other a
bafe of a p illa rb o th formed, out of the foft freeftone of this dif-
trift.. Thefe ornaments-,., from their; dimenfions,. feem to have belonged
to- maffive columns; and fhew that the church of this convent'
was a large and coftly edifice;. They were, found in the fpaee
which has always been fu-ppofed to have contained the fouth
tranfept of the Priory church. Some fragments-of large pilafters
were alfo found at the fame time; The. diameter of the capital
was two feet three inches apd an half; and of the column, where
it had flood on the bafe, eighteen inches- and three quarters.
Two years- agodome labourers digging: again among, the ruins
founded a fort of rude thick, vafe or urn of foft ftone, containing,
about two gallons in meafure, on the verge of the brook, in the very
fpot which tradition has always pointed out as having been the
fite of the convent kitchen.. This clurnfy utenfil “, whether intended
for holy water, or whatever purpofe, we were going to
procure, but found that the labourers had juft broken it in pieces,
and carried it out on the highways.
K
n A judicious antiquary, who faw this vafe, obferved, that it poffibly might have
been a standard meafare between the monaftery and it’s tenants. T h e priory we have
mentioned claimed the afijze o f bread and beer in St Home manor j and probably die
adj.uftment o f dry meafures for grain, &c*
The