MALMESBURY AND LACOCK. XXXV. 



THIRD SUMMER MEETING. 



MALMESBURY AND LACOCK. 



Thursday and Friday, I4=th and I5th August. 



The headquarters of the Club during this meeting were at 

 the Angel Hotel, Chippenham, a central point from which to 

 carry out the programme. The members, having assembled 

 at Malmesbury, placed themselves under the leadership of 

 their friend, Mr. E. Doran Webb, F.S.A., who had again con- 

 sented to act as guide during the two-days visit to Wiltshire. 



On reaching the Benedictine Abbey Church the party was 

 met by the Vicar, Canon McMiLLAN, who greeted the visitors 

 with a few words of welcome. 



Mr. DORAN WEBB then gave a short account of the history 

 of the town, the name of which was derived, as he thought, 

 from the Celtic and Saxon words " Mai dune beorg," or 

 Cross-hill-town . 



The first Abbot of whom anything was definitely known 

 was Aldhelm, who received a grant of lands in A.D. 675 from 

 Eleutherius, Bishop of Sherborne, as stated in the chartulary 

 of Malmesbury. In 705 Aldhelm became Bishop of Sherborne, 

 and was succeeded at Malmesbury by a long line of Abbots, 

 who controlled the church and monastery until the Dissolu- 

 tion. 



Turning to the exterior of the Abbey, now the Parish 

 Church, Mr. Webb remarked that this splendid relic of Twelfth 

 Century Romanesque architecture had originally a tower at 

 the Western end and a central tower at the crossing, sur- 

 mounted by a lofty spire of wood. Both of the towers fell 

 in the sixteenth century, the collapse of the Western one 

 destroying the three nearest bays of the nave. The West 

 screen front was afterwards rebuilt against the shortened 

 church. The portions in use to-day were the six remaining 

 bays of the nave, now walled up at the East end, and the 

 South porch. The Eastern limb, consisting of five bays, and 



