By E. W. Godwin, Esq. 145 



may have rendered sucli an act — however much to be regretted — 

 absolutely necessary. As I have before stated, the great charm 

 attached to the little Church which I have attempted to delineate, 

 rests chiefly in its ancient bell turret, and as it is the earliest 

 known example of its class, we may perhaps be allowed to digress 

 for a moment to enquire briefly into their origin. 



Previous to the erection of the Church of St. Nicholas at Bid- 

 deston, there existed at the other end of the village a Church 

 dedicated to St. Peter. It was taken down about ten or twelve 

 years since, but before its destruction most complete drawings and 

 measurements were taken, from which we learn that it contained 

 scarcely one stone upon another of a date antecedent to the 15th 

 century ; in other words, that the building presumed to have 

 been founded in the early ages of the Saxon Heptarchy, having 

 perhaps weathered the storms of 500 winters, became matter of 

 history, and that somewhere about the year 1430 the Church 

 of St. Peter was rebuilt. This building consisted at the time 

 of its final demolition of a Nave and South Porch, with a turret 

 on the west wall. A blocked-up arch in the east wall of the 

 Nave, and another in the north wall, with a piscina attached to 

 the latter, proved the former existence of a Chancel and Chantry 

 Chapel. The Chapel had been destroyed when the Church was 

 rebuilt, for under the blockcd-up arch a three light window had 

 been inserted of the same date as the other "Perpendicular" work. 

 This Chapel arch and its piscina were of the 13th century. Now 

 in an illumination of the Saxon MS. of the " Benedictionale of St. 

 ^thelwold " there is a representation of a kind of Tower Turret 

 (in which are hung 5 bells), and the form of the open part in which 

 the bells are suspended is by no means unlike that of Biddeston. 

 Again it will be seen that although "that of St. Nicholas is in point 

 of stylo much older than tliat of St. Peter " there is nevertheless 

 such a close similarity, as to induce the opinion that the one was 

 copied from the other. But the peculiar characteristics of tlicse 

 tarrets as well as those in the neighbourhood differing so much 

 from wliat we know of Norman work, imply an earlier origin, and 

 "that they must be referred to the fasliion of a time and not of a 



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