274 Stanley Abbey. 
in Surrey, claimed to be the first Cistercian house in England, 
though its claim was disputed by Furness, in Lancashire, the fine 
ruins of which are known to those who have visited the English 
lakes. And it may interest any Oxford men who may chance to be 
present, if I remind them that among the latest was the Cistercian 
house of St. Bernard, founded (1437) by Archbishop Chichele, the 
founder of All Souls, as a home for those Cistercian students who 
went to reside at the University. You will remember the statue of 
St. Bernard in the niche in the tower gateway of St. John’s: and 
three sides of the first quadrangle, with the chapel and hall, form a 
portion of the old buildings purchased after the Dissolution by Sir 
Thomas White, the founder of St. John Baptist’s College in Oxford. 
Stanley Abbey is in Bremhill parish, and is now included in the 
Ecclesiastical district of Derry Hill. It owes its foundation to 
Matilda, or Maud, the daughter of Henry I., the widow of the 
Emperor Henry V., and the mother, by her second husband— 
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou—of our King Henry II. 
Stanley Abbey was first founded (1151) as an offshoot of the Cis- 
tercian abbey of Quarr, near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, and lands 
were given to the monks to establish an abbey at Lockswell, in the 
forest. of Chippenham: but the brethren soon moved down the hill 
to Stanley, some two miles north-east on the left bank of the little 
river Marden, which flows into the Avon. Here they fixed them- 
selves on a slight eminence rising from the bank of the river, where 
the valley through which it flows begins to open out into the plain 
round Chippenham, between the hills now known as Bencroft and 
Derry Hill. The railway from Chippenham to Calne runs through 
the site, and the Wilts and Berks Canal is carried across the river 
just below: the position of the moat and the fishponds can still be 
traced.' In the older buildings of Stanley Abbey farm, erected on 
the site, I remember seeing some years ago a square-headed 
window, which may have formed part of some of the out-buildings ; 
this was removed when the old farm was made into cottages: 
and now, a portion of a broken stone coffin in the yard, a few 
1 See map. 
——L eee 
