CHEDDAR, WELLS, AND GLASTONBURY. Ixi. 



Driving back to the station, they then returned by train to 

 Wells, and repaired first to the small museum, containing many 

 interesting objects, chiefly of local origin, which is located in 

 what appears to have been the Domus Conversorum, over the west 

 cloister. 



THE BISHOP'S PALACE, WELLS. 



After tea at the Swan Hotel the party entered the grounds of 

 the Bishop's Palace, passing over the bridge and through the 

 embattled gatehouse with its square turrets, and noticing in 

 passing the grooves of the original portcullis, which has been 

 removed, and the chains of the drawbridge. The grounds, in 

 which grow many rare trees, are surrounded by an embattled 

 wall and a wide moat filled with water. 



The Palace was originally built by Bishop Joceline in the early 

 part of the Early English period, from 1205 to 1222, and it is 

 justly considered to be one of the most perfect and interesting 

 specimens of a dwellinghouse of the Middle Ages still inhabited. 

 The most modern part of the Palace is the addition made by 

 Bishop Bekinton in the middle of the 1 5th Century. The guide 

 led the way to the roofless and partially ruinous walls of the great 

 Banqueting Hall built by Bishop Burnell, 1275 to 1293, and 

 stated that it was in this hall that the last Abbot of Glastonbury, 

 Richard Whiting, underwent a mock trial, on a trumped-up 

 charge, before being dragged on a hurdle to Glastonbury Tor 

 for execution. The guide led them next to Bishop Ken's grotto 

 and walk, where he is said to have composed his hymns. The 

 walk lies along the inside of the battlemented wall which was 

 built, with the licence of Edward III., by Bishop Ralph of Shrews- 

 bury. He pointed out how, along the course of the wall, crossed 

 arrow slits alternate with embrasures for the primitive cannon of 

 Edwardian days. A little later he showed the window of the 

 room in which Bishop Kidder, successor to Bishop Ken, and his 

 wife as they lay in their bed were killed one boisterous night in 

 1703 by a stack of chimneys which fell from the Virgin Tower 

 right through the roof of the bedroom. Dorchester Members 



