58 TARRANT RUSHTON CHURCH. 



sum was expended on the roof and other parts of the church. A 

 gallery at the west end was removed, and as the eastern face of the 

 bell chamber had been formed by timber only, resting on a beam, 

 this was replaced by a wall built on an arch, which, whilst it adds 

 to the stability of the building, may be considered by some to be 

 not altogether in keeping with the architectural character of the 

 church generally. When I became Rector in 1877 the church 

 was almost entirely covered with plaster, probably several 

 hundred years old, which had been again and again whitewashed or 

 coloured in one uniform tint. Portions of the walls were in a 

 ruinous state as well as the whitewashed semi-circular ceiling 

 of the nave and transepts. The plaster has now been re- 

 moved, and the walls of green sandstone, ironstone and flint 

 pointed. The roof of the north transept has been restored to 

 its old appearance, the principals, purlins, and circular braces 

 having, on examination, proved to be perfectly sound ; whilst in 

 the nave and south transept there is an independent ceiling of 

 wood. The leper-door in the north transept had been blocked up. 

 This has been opened and now forms the inner entrance to a 

 vestry, which has been built on the outside in a style suited to the 

 church. The work was spread over nine years and was completed 

 shortly before the celebration of Her Majesty's Jubilee. In con- 

 sequence of the dampness of the chancel before the earth was 

 removed from the foundations on the outside, and especially as the 

 two-light south window was entirely, and the leper window partly, 

 blocked up, a former Rector raised the level of the floor. This has had 

 the effect of dwarfing the chancel arch. For many years there were 

 two slabs of Purbeck marble forming the pavement at the south 

 entrance outside the porch. One of these having an incised cross 

 given roughly in Hutchins' History of Dorset had originally been 

 the cover of a tomb. The pattern of the cross exactly resembles one 

 in relief placed over one of the last Abbots in Tewkesbury Abbey. 

 This is now in the churchyard wall opposite to the south door. 

 The other slab either belonged to an altar-tomb or, as some think, 

 was the stone altar of the church, ordered to be removed at the 



