XXII. 



4.30 p.m., after thanking their host and hostess for their hospitality. 

 They returned to the village, where tea was provided at the Soldiers' 

 Institute, after which they left the Island by the 5.30 train. 



THE SHERBORNE MEETING. A two days meeting was held at 

 Sherborne, on Thursday and Friday, August 28th and 29th, and tine 

 weather attended the proceedings, which was a rare advantage in this 

 wet season. The programme had been arranged so as to enable the 

 members to meet the Somersetshire Archaeological Society on the 

 second day across the borders of the County at Cadbury Castle, 

 and as this Society had made all the arrangements and undertaken 

 to provide the information in that locality, the first of the two 

 days (Thursday) was the only one for which the Dorsetshire execu- 

 tive was responsible. A large party was present on each of the 

 days, and the Digby Hotel, at Sherborne, formed the head-quarters 

 during the visit. At twelve o'clock on Thursday, a start was made 

 for the Abbey. The monument erected to the memory of the late 

 G. D. Wingfield Digby Esq., who restored the building, was noticed, and 

 then the party assembled in the Vestry, where Mr. K. D. Carpenter, a 

 leading ecclesiastical architect of London, narrated the history of the 

 building, elucidating his statement with the help of coloured diagrams 

 and ground plans. He observed that a portion of the Roman pavement 

 found on the site of the Abbey sometime ago, carried the history of the 

 Church back to a period anterior to the Anglo-Saxon time of the 

 commencement of the Eighth Century, but it was not until then that the 

 architectural and documentary history began. In A.D. 705, Ina, a West 

 Saxon King, appointed St. Aldhelm to the bishopric of Sherborne, then it 

 was separated from the Diocese of Winchester. In the same year he 

 founded a small nunnery at the mouth of the Frome, at Wareham, and 

 probably also built the Church of St. Martin there. He most likely had 

 his Cathedral at Sherborne, which was served by clergy and not by 

 monks. St. Aldhelm was bishop for four years, and died in 709. It is 

 probable the monks of Glastonbury rebuilt the wooden church of 

 Doulting as a memorial to him. Sherborne had 26 Bishops in all, the last 

 being Herman, chaplain to Edward the Confessor. On his decease in 

 1072 A.D., the bishopric was removed to Old Sarum. In A.D. 1125 

 Pope Honorius II. conferred large grants of land and endowments on the 

 Abbey. The whole of the Anglo-Saxon Cathedral, with the exception of 

 the western doorway of the north aisle of the nave and some adjoining 

 walls, were pulled down by Bishops Rogers and Thurston. This doorway, 

 which is in the early Anglo-Saxon style, is now blocked up. The Lady 



