By the Rev. Canon Eddrup. 275 
stones lying about here and there, some fragments placed by Canon 
Bowles in the vicarage garden at Bremhill, are all that remain of 
the once famous abbey of Stanley. The ground is uneven, pre- 
senting the appearance of having been turned over in search for 
stones. Where the Church or the other buildings stood it seems 
useless to conjecture; Aubrey, writing more than two hundred 
years ago, says :—“ here is now scarce left any vestigium of Church 
or house.” ! 
In those early times of the foundation of the abbey the whole 
_ country round Chippenham for miles and miles away, by Derry 
Hill, Studley, Bowood, Pewsham, and through a great part of North 
Wilts, would appear to have been a vast forest; and the lower 
grounds along the banks of the river were probably in great part 
marsh and swamp. ‘To our ideas, Lockswell, high and dry, on the 
hill side, with its ever-flowing spring of clear pure water, would 
seem the better site ; but the other had the advantage, so important 
_ in that day, that fish ponds could be easily made and readily kept 
filled. But when the monks first settled here.it must have seemed 
a damp and dismal spot; and Aubrey, writing more than a hundred 
_ years after the dissolution of the abbey, when the buildings had 
been destroyed, the brotherhood long dispersed, and the place left 
neglected, says :—“ It is very rich land and lies by the river’s side, 
q but in a place in the winter time altogether unpleasant.”’? But the 
_ Cistercians were known as skilful and industrious cultivators, and 
_ it was not long before forest was cleared and marsh reclaimed. “ We 
_ owe,” says Hallam,® not by any means a friendly witness, “ the 
q agricultural restoration of great part of Europe to the monks.” 
Of course no trace remains of the wooden huts which the brethren 
erected for their shelter during the brief space (but three years, it is 
said) that they remained at Lockswell: but even after they removed 
i 3 1 Aubrey’s Wiltshire Collections (1659—1670), Jackson's edition, p. 113, 
; 2 Aubrey, p. 112, 113. 
3 Hallam, Middle Ages, ix,, ii. 
T2 
