at the Salisbury Meeting. 85 
of any past discoveries or recent investigations bearing on the subject 
in its general aspect, so the President of the Architectural Section 
will fulfil his task most adequately if he offers a rapid survey of the 
architecture of the district—ecclesiastical, domestic, and military, 
and also makes mention of the chief architectural events of the past 
year bearing on the science in its archwological aspect. Both these 
objects I will endeavour, however imperfectly, to fulfil. 
Pre-historic architecture, illustrated so magnificently in the county 
of Wilts in the mysterious circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, and 
the standing stones, cromlechs, and cistvaens which stud its downs, 
as well as in the camps and villages which so abundantly crown the 
hill crests, belongs to the Section of Antiquities and does not enter 
into our present purpose. Architecture, properly so called, begins 
for us with the so-called Anglo-Saxon era; a convenient and in- 
telligible, if not strictly correct term. Of this era the county of 
Wilts has several examples to show, one of which is certainly un- 
surpassed in value by any building of its age in England. I mean, 
of course, the old Church at Bradford-on-Avon, rescued from its 
desecration and restored to its sacred purpose by one whose premature 
death has inflicted an irreparable loss upon the archeology of Wilt- 
shire generally, and of Salisbury in particular, never more acutely 
felt than at our present gathering, the late Canon Rich Jones. In 
this little building, which, in the words of one who, though happily 
he is still alive and likely to live for many years, and is not so very 
far from us, is, unhappily not with us—Professor Freeman—is 
“ probably the most ancient unaltered Church in England,” we may 
safely recognize the Church erected by St. Aldhelm at the beginning 
of the eighth century and mentioned by William of Malmesbury as 
standing in his day, as it still stands in our day, at the Broad Ford 
over the Avon; “est ad hunc diem in eo loco ecclesiola quam ad 
nomen beatissimi Laurentii (Aldhelmus) fecisse predicatur.” All 
qualified judges who see it will agree that there is only one period 
at which a building so remarkable both in its outline and in its 
detail could have been erected in England, and that the period named _ 
by Malmesbury. There are other examples of the same rude pre- 
Norman style in the remarkable Church of Britford and at North 
D2 
