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Norman edifice which was built by John de Villula upon the 

 site previously occupied by tlie Saxon building ; consider- 

 able remains will be found by those who know where to look 

 for them. Of the Saxon building there are none, but in this 

 book at Cambridge which I have mentioned there is informa- 

 tion about the Saxon Church. It is incidentally mentioned that 

 the church is of unusually beautiful architecture — mira fabrica — a 

 wonderful fabric, and such it might naturally be. It was built 

 in a place in which stone was in abundance without quarrying. 

 There were all the materials of the Roman city to build a church 

 with, so that at a time when stone churches were extremely rare 

 in our country there was a beautiful stone church at the Abbey 

 of Bath. Of that church we have no part of the architecture 

 remaining, but I think I can point to certain fragments which 

 are connected with its history. There are in the Institution two 

 fragments of two different Saxon crosses ; the cross was an object 

 which the Saxons particularly decorated and ornamented, in fact 

 we are rather beginning in some of our tomb-stone crosses 

 to copy the decoration of the Saxon crosses. There are two 

 pieces of the heads of two different Saxon crosses in the 

 Institution here, and they both have been figured by Mr. 

 Poole in his " Old Crosses of Somerset." Then there is among 

 the excavations from the Eoman baths a piece of the upper part of 

 the shaft of a Saxon cross, ornamented with a triquetrous inter- 

 lacing pattern which is quite unmistakable. It belongs to no 

 other period at all unless it may possibly be a specimen of the 

 interlacing work of British crosses. But I believe it is 

 Saxon. There is also the basement of a Saxon pillar, probably 

 one of the pillars of the church which was part of this handsome 

 building I have referred to. These are the chief ecclesiastical 

 remains that I have been able to see in Bath, but at Bitton (Mr. 

 Ellacombo says, I have not myself verified it) there is over 

 the chancel arch — which is Norman — higher up in the wall 

 and surrounding the Norman arch, visible traces of a previous 



