i 
By the Rev. J. E. Jackson. 37 
on their own account, probably under the superintendance of one 
or two of their order. At the dissolution, it was granted by Henry 
VIII. to Sir Edward Seymour, who, (as above stated) had recently 
obtained the grant of Allington. Monkton remained in his family 
till the marriage of the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Seymour, with 
Thomas Lord Bruce, afterwards Earl of Ailesbury. In 1686, 
Lord Ailesbury sold his property at Monkton, to Mr. Arthur 
Esmeade of Calne, from whom it passed by family arrangements, 
first to the Edridges, and from them to the present owner G. Moore 
Esmeade, Esq. 
2. SranLEy ABBEY. 
Of Stanley Abbey nothing is left but the green site, which lies 
just within the eastern edge of the parish of Chippenham. It was 
a house of Cistercian Monks, placed originally at Lockswell, near 
the top of Derry Hill, but removed two or three years after to the 
lower ground on the bank of the rivulet of Marden. What the 
monks may have lost in fine air, they gained in good land. The 
house was founded by the Empress Maud, and her son King Henry 
II., and further endowed by Edward I. with a large portion of the 
land in that quarter of the royal manor, extending southward from 
the Marden, under Derry Hill, to Nethermore. For a history of 
this monastic establishment there is plenty of material, but of the 
appearance and extent of the building itself, I am not aware that 
any view is preserved. The monks were the improvers of a large 
tract of waste land on the outskirts of the Forest; and in Nether- 
more, where the various landowners of Chippenham had rights of 
feeding, the Abbey, by degrees, procured the transfer of those rights 
to itself. At the dissolution, the principal part of the Stanley 
Abbey estate was purchased by Sir Edward Baynton of Bromham, 
to whose representative, the owner of Spy Park, it still belongs. 
The Abbot’s house stood for some time afterwards, and was occupied 
by a family of Ansty, one of whom married the daughter and 
heiress of Andrew Baynton, Esq., who is buried in Chippenham 
church. 
Tue Borover or CurerEnnaM. 
We have now made the tour of the parish, a tedious one I fear 
for the lady Archwologists; but having ended the walk at Monkton 
