By the Rec. J. E. Jackson. 51 



Clutterbuck of Hardenliuish, subscriptions were raised, and a new 

 Churcli, bearing in recognition of the old Cliapel the name of St. 

 Peter, was built, and consecrated by the late Bishop of Gloucester 

 and Bristol, on Thursday April 19th 1855. The site and £50 

 were given by Mr. Walter Coleman ; £200 by the late Mr. Neeld 

 of Grittleton ; and the sums of £100 each by Mr. Clutterbuck, the 

 late Rev. R. Ashe of Langley Burrell, Viscount Wellesley, and 

 Mr. Sheppard. By further subscription a School has since been 

 added, and a resident Curate is provided by the Vicar of Kington 

 St. Michael's. Langley was sometimes called Langley Fearne 

 (1513), or Langley Fernhill (1660). 



St. Mary's Priory. 



About three quarters of a mile north of Kington Church by the 

 footpath leading to Leigh Delamere, in a pleasant open pasture- 

 country, a very old farmhouse, with a heavily coped garden wall on 

 on the eastern side, is the present representative of Priory St. 

 Mary's. It was a House of Benedictines, for a Prioress, Sub- 

 Prioress, and eight or nine Nuns, reduced to four at the Dissolution. 

 Bishop Tanner quotes an authority to prove that it existed before 

 A.D. 1155,^ but neither the exact year of foundation, nor name of 

 the Founder, have been positively ascertained. It was attributed 

 in Aubrey's time to the Empress Matilda, mother of King Henry 

 II., the founder of the neighbouring Abbey of Stanley near Chip- 

 penham. This may have been the case ; but the charters of St. 

 Mary's Priory, in which her name does not occur, seem to point 

 out another person, one Robert of ^Bryntone, or as he is also 

 called, " Robert, son of Wayfer of Brintone." Whether projected 

 or not by some previous benefactor, he at least was the first to set 

 the House up (" locum constituit"), by a gift of Tithes (in Dorset- 

 shire) for maintenance : and the Nuns held the site by sufferance 

 nntil it was formally assured to them by another of the family, 

 Adura Wayfer of Brintone. The gift was confirmed by Sir Hugh 

 de Mortimer, whose family, as already stated, held an est- te in this 



» "Pardon, monialibus do Chiuton." — Rot. Pip. 2 lien. II., WilteHcire. 



d2 



