STUDLAND CHURCH. 177 



window head, similar to the one inserted in N.W. window (pi. II., 

 fig. 2), evidently taken from the N.E. nave window. 



THE BELLS 



lend scope for conjecture. Three were cast in the seventeenth 

 century, but the large one bears the astonishing date 1065 ; that is 

 about the supposed date of the rubble-work of the earliest builders 

 of the church. 



S. ^Ethelwold's Benedictional shows five bells in a tower of the 



4 



tenth century. Bede, A.D. 674, mentions " the hearing the well 

 known sound of a bell," perhaps one of hooped wood in an open 

 turret, and maybe the Studland bell was at first in such a turret, 

 and was taken down when the tower was enlarged. This bell bears 

 an inscription in English " Draw nigh to God." It has been 

 suggested that the date should be 1605 ; but it is not, it might 

 have happened in reversing the figure in casting. 



Again, it is an inferior bell to the rest, showing fire-cracks and 

 sounding ill. The learned in campanology should doff their coats 

 and examine the problem. They have never done this. There 

 were certainly cast bells in England thirty years before 1065. 



INTERESTING EELICS 



were unearthed during the excavation of the trenches for under- 

 pinning purposes. Three distinct layers of burials with the upper 

 graves of the modern type, the second " cists," for which rough, 

 unhewn, Swanage stones had been used to surround and cover the 

 bodies, and beneath these, lying in a line approaching N.E. to S. W., 

 were " cists " formed of rough local flints and some stones. The 

 remains were re-interred at a greater depth in the hard sand beneath 

 the concrete. 



Under the S.E. corner of the tower it became necessary to go 

 down twelve feet. In excavating, a brick grave containing a coffin 

 was found touching the S. chancel wall. There was no inscription 

 and it was reburied under the yew tree, thirty-two feet N. of the 

 N. door of the nave. 



