XXX. MARLBOROUGH. 



SECOND SUMMER MEETING. 



MARLBOROUGH. 

 Tuesday and Wednesday, 23rd and 24:th July. 



On this occasion about sixty Members and visitors accom- 

 panied the President on a very successful pilgrimage extend- 

 ing over two days. 



Shortly after assembling at the Ailesbury Arms on the 

 Tuesday the party visited St. Peter's Church, at the further 

 end of the wide High Street. 



Mr. E. DORAN WEBB, F.S.A., of whose services as guide the club 

 again had the advantage, said a few words in the church about the 

 history of the town, and of the tumulus known as the Castle Mound. 

 He also touched upon the incidents connected with St. Peter's in early 

 times, remarking that Cardinal Wolsey was ordained in the Chancel 

 in 1494. 



THE SCHOOL. 



From the church Mr. Doran Webb, by leave of the Headmaster, 

 led the party over the School, which was founded in 1843, with the 

 charming old Castle Inn as the nucleus of the modern buildings which 

 have been erected round it. 



AVEBURY CHURCH, 



a place of exceptional interest, was next visited. As Mr. Doran Webb 

 pointed out, the church was subjected to severe mutilation 

 in the 18th Century, when the early Norman arches were 

 replaced by the present modern work. Attention was called to the 

 three small circular windows in the wall of the north arcade, 

 windows which Mr. Charles E. Ponting, F.S.A., regarded as being 

 Saxon. But the great rarity of the church is the font. The upper 

 part, with its quaint interweaving symbolical design, is of quite a 

 different date from the lower part, adorned with Norman arcading 

 formed of intersecting arches. The most noticeable object of the upper 

 and the much older half is a priestly figure wearing a kind of quilted 

 frock, its face quite disfigured by the driving in of a staple, and hold- 

 ing in the right hand a crozier-like staff. Mr. Doran Webb said he 

 knew of no font with so distinctive and strong a Scandinavian feeling 

 in the design and adornment, and Dr. COLLEY MARCH, F.S.A., 

 agreed with him that the upper part was Scandinavian. 



Mr. H. ST. GEORGE GRAY, assistant secretary of the Somerset 

 Archaeological Society, and the director of the excavations at Avebury, 



