314 THE ANTIQUITIES 



give from his own knowledge. When a schoolboy, more than 

 fifty years ago, he was eye-witness, perhaps a party concerned, in 

 the undermining a portion of that fine old ruin at the north end of 

 Basingstoke town, well known by the name of Holy Ghost Chapel. 

 Very providentially the vast fragment, which these thoughtless 

 little engineers endeavoured to sap, did not give way so soon as 

 might have been expected ; but it fell the night following, and 

 with such violence that it shook the very ground, and, awakening 

 the inhabitants of the neighbouring cottages, made them start up 

 in their beds as if they had felt an earthquake. The motive for 

 this dangerous attempt does not so readily appear : perhaps the 

 more danger the more honour thought the boys ; and the notion 

 of doing some mischief gave a zest to the enterprize. As Dryden 

 says upon an other occasion, 



" It look'd so like a sin it pleas' d the more." 



Had the Priory been only levelled to the surface of the ground, 

 the discerning eye of an antiquary might have ascertained 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, containing 

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



