42 On the History of Chippenham. 
was built about a.p. 1120, (Henry I.) it must have been almost 
before any part of the manor had been granted to subjects; also 
before the Tithes were appropriated and whilst there was a Rector 
resident. 
Into any detailed description of Chippenham church I cannot 
now enter. The best parts of it (both of them much later than 
the chancel) are the two chapels on the south side; the one against 
the chancel, the other against the nave. The former was, I believe, 
dedicated to St. Mary,! the latter to St. John the Baptist. Both 
were originally Chantries for the use of private families, the Hun- 
gerfords, and the Beauchamps of Bromham, or their successors the 
Bayntons. The difficulty has been to decide which was built by 
which, for the evidence usually decisive of such points, (as monu- 
ments, family devices, coats of arms, &c.), is so confused that it is 
not easy to distinguish the respective founders. That the chapel 
against the chancel was built by the Hungerfords seems most 
probable, for the ceiling is still covered with their arms, and Aubrey 
who lived close to Chippenham in 1650 and knew the living 
Hungerfords well, describes this part of the church as theirs, iden- 
tifying it by certain marks which still remain. In the corner of 
it is amonument to Andrew Baynton, Esq., which has been perhaps 
the reason why this has often been called the Baynton chapel. 
But as his family were living in 1579 (the date of his death) at 
Rowdon House, which belonged to the Hungerfords, possibly he 
may have been buried in the Hungerford’s chapel. 
There are notices of a third chantry dedicated to St. Andrew. 
Where this was is uncertain. A few years ago a large fragment 
of gravestone (now preserved in the vestry) was found under the 
church floor near the present lesson desk, bearing a portion of 
very old inscription, which mentions a chantry founded by one 
Clerk and Alice his wife. 
Some part of the church was also used for sacred purposes by a 
guild, (a company formed either for protection of trade or for 
1 One of the tenements with which this chapel was endowed, was in that 
part of Chippenham called ‘‘ Foghamshire,” and was known as “‘the house of 
St. Mary.” 
