Excursion on Satufclay, August 21«t. IGl 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 21st. 



A very interesting excursion to Bowood and Lacock tempted an 

 increased number of archaeologists to avail themselves of the op- 

 portunity of visiting those charming seats. The first stopping-place 

 was at Bromham, where the Rector (Rev. E. B. Edgell) conducted 

 the party over the Church, and described the wretched state in which 

 he found it on his coming to the incumbency — the late Rector, who 

 held the living for sixty-five yearsj having been an absentee. It 

 has a fine central tower and spire, and an Early English chancel, 

 and was restored a few years since by Messrs. Carpenter and Slater. 

 The plan of it is unusual and disproportionate, occasioned by the 

 addition, in the fifteenth century, of a large aisle, transept and 

 chantry, to the south of what was not a cruciform Church. This 

 chantry forms a chancel aisle, and is a gem of Late Perpendicular 

 work : it was built by Richard Beauchamp, Lord St. Armand, and 

 has an embattled parapet enriched with panelling and an eastern 

 canopy, a flat panelled roof, painted and gult with heraldic devices, 

 and, happily, untouched by the restorer's brush. In the centre 

 stands an altar- tomb (to Sir R. Tocotes, who died about 1492,) 

 made of Purbeck marble, with recumbent effigy of alabaster. There 

 are also canopied tombs and monuments to the families of the 

 Beauchamps and Bayntons, having an unusual wealth of enamelled 

 brasses, and on the wall are three undertaker's helmets of the 

 sixteenth century. No little interest was shown in the tomb of the 

 poet Mooi'e, who, for the last twenty years of his life, occupied 

 Sloperton Cottage in this parish, and to whose memory the west 

 window was only last year filled with stained glass. In a field near 

 the village some remains of a Roman villa were visited, and described 

 by Mr. G. R. Weight and Mr. "VV. Cunnington. Ihe portions 

 uncovered consist of parts of two tesselated pavements^ adjoining 

 one another, though slightly differing in level, the more elaborate 

 one having a guilloche pattern executed in black, brown, grey, and 

 red tesserae of chalk and clay, and close by are traces of a hypocaust. 



There was nothing to be seen at Wans, the site of the Roman 

 station Verlucio, except another portion of the Roman road running 

 from Bath to Marlborough, the same road which, on a previous day. 



