370 ANTIQUITIES 



ground, the discerning eye of an antiquary might have ascer- 

 tained it's ichnography, and some judicious hand might have 

 developed it's dimensions. But, besides other ravages, the 

 very foundations have been torn up for the repair of the 

 highways : so that the site of this convent is now become a 

 rough, rugged pasture-field, full of hillocks and pits, choaked 

 with nettles, and dwarf-elder, and trampled by the feet of the 

 ox and the heifer. 



As the tenant at the Priory was lately digging among the 

 foundations, for materials to mend the highways, his labourers 

 discovered two large stones, with which the farmer was so 

 pleased that he ordered them to be taken out whole. One of 

 these proved to be a large Doric capital, worked in good 

 taste ; and the other a base of a pillar ; both formed out of 

 the soft freestone of this district. These ornaments, from 

 their dimensions, seem to have belonged to massive columns ; 

 and shew that the church of this convent was a large and 

 costly edifice. They were found in the space which has 

 always been supposed to have contained the south transept of 

 the Priory church. Some fragments of large pilasters were 

 also found at the same time. The diameter of the capital was 

 two feet three inches and an half; and of the column, where it 

 had stood on the base, eighteen inches and three quarters. 



Two years ago some labourers digging again among the 

 ruins found a sort of rude thick vase or urn of soft stone, con- 

 taining about two gallons in measure, on the verge of the 

 brook, in the very spot which tradition has always pointed out 

 as having been the site of the convent kitchen. This clumsy 

 utensil, 11 whether intended for holy water, or whatever pur- 

 pose, we were going to procure, but found that the labourers 

 had just broken it in pieces, and carried it out on the high- 

 ways. 



The Priory of Selborne had possessed in this village a 



n A judicious antiquary, who saw this vase, observed, that it possibly 

 might have been a standard measure between the monastery and it's 

 tenants. The priory we have mentioned claimed the assize of bread and 

 beer in Selborne manor : and probably the adjustment of dry measures for 

 grain, &c. 



