178 Notes on Churches visited in 1898. 
the founder of Merton College, Oxford, who was in holy orders in 
1237, is said to have been Rector here.! He gave the advowson 
and lands to his college, and endowed a vicarage. An alien priory 
here was confiscated and its property given by Henry VI. to King’s 
College, Cambridge. The name of the place is doubtless due to 
its being on the Roman road=“ street town.” 
Cuurcu or 8. Jonn THE Baptist, HANNINGTON. 
The plan is a simple one of nave and chancel, with west tower 
and south porch. 
This is not the first Church which stood on this site, for the 
south doorway of the nave and that of the porch are remains of a 
building of the latter half of the twelfth century. The porch 
doorway is plain one with semicircular arch having a small 
chamfer worked on it, and with chamfered label. The nave door- 
way is much more elaborate and has a “button ”” chevron member 
in the arch, nail-head ornament on the impost mould, and dog-tooth 
on the label: the stops to the inner chamfer on the jambs are very 
interesting. 
The nave was re-built early in the thirteenth century, not later 
than 1230. It is somewhat difficult to conceive a reason for the 
re-building of this within eighty years from its first erection, if, 
indeed, the latter event is actually represented by the doorway. 
—it seems more reasonable to suppose that the doorway was 
inserted in a still older building, and re-used in the Karly English — 
reconstruction. Anyhow, no part of the nave can be set down at 
an earlier date than the first quarter of the thirteenth century. 
The north and south walls throughout and the buttresses are of 
that period with the exception of the easternmost bays of the north - 
and south walls, which were re-built, with diagonal buttresses built 
at the angles, and a three-light square-headed window inserted on 
Seen te ee ee eee 
1 Jackson’s Aubrey, p. 161. 
