PROCEEDINGS FOR 1897 CLXV 



One more tower and that an ideal one, a structure that seems to 

 satisfy the most fastidious seeker after majesty and grace in architecture. 

 Here again in St. Stephen's tower is the work of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury, and the outcome of the liberality of one of Bristol's citizens, 

 John Shipward by name, and surely never did mortal man have 

 nobler monument ! 1 shall not attempt either description or further 

 eulogy. I will only quote a passage from John Euskin and ask you to 

 apply it to the Tower of St. Stephen's : " Your noble tower must need 

 no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must give place to no sus- 

 picion of decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth 

 for tidings, or to point to heaven ; but it must have in its own walls the 

 strength to do this ; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by 

 other bulwarks ; to rise and look forth, ' the tower of Lebanon that 

 looketh towards Damascus ; ' like a stern sentinel, not like a child held 

 up in its nurse's arms. A tower may indeed have a kind of buttress, a 

 projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles, but these are to its 

 main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength and 

 associated with its uprightness, part of the tower itself. Exactly in the 

 proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body, and 

 assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower loses 

 its dignity." ^ If one could add anything to Euskin, more would not be 

 needed. 



Passing from the churches because I must, I should like to linger 

 for a few moments amongst the memories and remains of the old religious 

 houses, for which Bristol was famous in the middle ages. The ancient 

 records refer to no less than sixteen of these houses, some of which existed 

 for monastic and others more especially for benevolent purposes. Some 

 were in the heart of the crowded town, and others stretched, as already 

 stated, in a wide semi-circle on its northern fringe. Of only seven of these 

 do any remains whatever exist, and in most cases these remains are only 

 fragmentary. 



St. Augustine's monastery and its abbey church have already been 

 referred to, and three others must not be passed over. On the northern 

 side of St. Augustine's Green, opposite the monastery, stood the Hospital 

 of the Gaunts, the college chapel of which, dedicated to St. Mark, is 

 still beautifully preserved. For nearly two hundred years past it has 

 been known as the "mayor's chapel," it having been through that long 

 period the official church of the mayor and corporation of Bristol. The 

 object for which the hospital was founded in 1220 was the feeding of one 

 hundred poor people daily, and this purpose it fulfilled under a succes- 

 sion of master-almoners, and with some intervals of irregularity, for more 

 than three hundred years. The fifteenth century was perhaps the period 

 of its greatest activity, judging by the additions made to the structure, 

 1 Stones of Venice, i. p. 200. 



