ruction of the noble pile
the site was used as a stone quarry, and fragments may be found in
almost all the older houses in the town, and in many farm buildings in
the neighbourhood. There is hardly an old garden near that has not
some carved stones of curious shape recognisable by the antiquary as
having once formed part of a shaft, a window, or an archway of the
proud Abbey. Of these scattered fragments the most important is the
lectern of alabaster, Romanesque in style, now, after long misuse and
neglect serving its original purpose in the church of Saint Egwin at
Norton, a village lying nearly three miles to the north of the town. A
description of this relic will be found in the last section of this
work.

The local tradition of the splendour of the Monastery is no doubt
handed down to us by Thomas Habington, the antiquary, who visited the
town in 1640. "There was not to be found," he writes, with pardonable
exaggeration, "out of Oxford or Cambridge, so great an assemblage of
religious buildings in the kingdom"!

CHAPTER V

THE PARISH CHURCHES

The two parish churches, placed together in one yard, make with the
bell tower an unusually striking group. What then would be the
feelings aroused in the spectator were the great church, a cathedral
in magnitude and splendour, still visible, rising majestically above
roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than
add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by
which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the
buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were
as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to
the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been
part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's
wall already described, and a second wall, part of which is still
standing, divided it from the Monastery and the monastic grounds.

The Church of All Saints seems to have served, from very early times,
as the parish church. As we examine it we read, as in an ancient and
partly illegible manuscript, its long story. The restorer, more
ruthless than Age or Time, has, with the best intentions, laid his
heavy hand upon it, and obliterated much of its character and history;
but enough remains to interest us, though pleasure is now mingled with
much vain regret. In the simple Norman arch through which we pass as
we enter the