40 ABBOTSBURY ABBEY. 



the story of the Abbey down to the dissolution. In those long 

 years the possessions of the Abbey increased, comprising at 

 length 22 manors, besides other profits and privileges. These 

 consisted of lands, rectories, advowsons, and pensions. The 

 Abbey lands in Abbotsbury alone amounted to more than 2,000 

 acres. Yet the revenue was the lowest, as the Abbey was the most 

 recent, among all the Benedictine houses in Dorset. At the 

 dissolution the value was put down at only about 400 a year. 

 But this must have been vastly too low. After the dissolution 

 the buildings and (I think) only the Abbotsbury land were 

 granted to the Strangways family, and less than 100 years 

 later their income therefrom was estimated at ;8oo per annum. 

 The Strangways family altered or rebuilt part of the Abbey 

 buildings for a mansion. In 1644 this was besieged, taken, and 

 " burnt to the ground" by Sir A. A. Cooper for the Parliament. 



Such is a faint, scratchy, outline of the story of old Abbotsbury 

 Abbey, the fragments of the buildings of which we must now 

 hasten to consider. First, though, I would add a word of surprise 

 that there seems no record of the Abbey being wasted by Corsairs. 

 It would seem to be especially exposed to them ; and Coker says 

 of two places quite near Berwick and Bexington that the 

 " owners were heretofore much pestered with the French Pyrates." 



Now, then, we turn to the remnants of the great group of 

 buildings which in varying style adorned and dignified this pleasant 

 valley, and against the warm tones of which the black Benedictine 

 vesture must have shown solemnly and well as the fathers walked 

 the cloister, or filed up the church, or sat in the refectory, or 

 passed out to say mass in St. Catharine's of the hill. 



The last great monastery-site visited by the Club was Bindon. 

 Attention may for a moment be drawn to the very striking 

 difference in almost every point between the two. Bindon is 

 hardly raised above the level of the Frome, and was surely 

 liable to be flooded in old times of presumably greater rain-fall. 

 Abbotsbury, lying low indeed as regards the considerable hills 

 encircling it, and not destitute of water-streams, is wholly free 



