ARCHITECTURE : WARDOUR CASTLE, CHURCHES AT CALNE, ETC. 99 



p. 172. In a communication from the last named gentleman in 1841, when he was engaged upon 

 his History of Salisbury, he wrote to me as follows : " I have lately fallen upon what appears to 

 have been Sir C. Wren's original report relative to the cathedral ; a very elaborate report on the 

 state of the building in 1691, by a person named Naish ; some good observations on the bending of 

 the piers (anonymous) ; and several estimates and observations made by Price. What I shall do 

 with them I have not yet determined." J. B.] 



Wardour Castle was very strongly built of freestone. I never saw it but when I was a youth ; 

 the day after part of it was blown up : and the mortar was so good that one of the little towers re- 

 clining on one side did hang together and not fall in peeces. It was called Warder Castle from the 

 conserving there the ammunition of the West. 



Sir William Dugdale told me, many years since, that about Henry the Third's time the Pope 

 gave a bull or patents to a company of Italian Freemasons to travell up and down over all Europe 

 to build churches. From those are derived the fraternity of adopted Masons. They are known to 

 one another by certain signes and watch-words : it continues to this day. They have sevcrall 

 lodges in severall counties for their reception, and when any of them fall into decay the brotherhood 

 is to relieve him, &c. The manner of their adoption is very formall, and with an oath of secresy. 



Memorandum. This day, May the 18th, being Munday, 1691, after Rogation Sunday, is a great 

 convention at St. Paul's Church of the fraternity of the adopted Masons, where Sir Christopher 

 Wren is to be adopted a brother, and Sir Henry Goodric, of the Tower, and divers others. There 

 have been kings of this sodality. 



At Pottern, a great mannour belonging to the Bishop of Sarum, is a very faire strong built 

 church, with a great tower in the middest of the crosse aisle. It is exactly of the same architecture 

 of the cathedrall church at Sarum, and the windowes are painted by the same hand, in that kind of 

 Gothick grotesco. Likewise the church at Kington St. Michael's, and that at Sopworth, are of the 

 same fashion, and built about the same time, sc. with slender marble pillars to the windowes ; and 

 just so the church of Glastonbury Abbey, and Westminster Abbey. Likewise the architecture of 

 the church at Bishop's Cannings is the same, and such pillars to the windowes. 



At Calne was a fine high steeple which stood upon four pillars in the middle of the church. One 

 of the pillars was faulty, and the churchwardens were dilatory, as is usual in such cases. 

 Chivers, Esq. of that parish, foreseeing the fall of it, if not prevented, and the great charge they 

 must be at by it, brought down Mr. Inigo Jones to survey it. This was about 1639 or 1640 : he 

 gave him 30 li. out of his own purse for his panics. Mr. Jones would have underbuilt it for an 

 hundred pounds. About 1645 it fell down, on a Saturday, and also broke down the chancell ; the 

 parish have since been at 1,000 li. charge to make a new heavy tower. Such will be the fate of our 

 steeple at Kington St. Michael ; one cannot perswade the parishioners to goe out of their own way. 

 [In another of Aubrey's MSS. (his " Description of North Wiltshire,") is a sketch of the tower and 

 spire of the church of Kington St. Michael, shewing several large and serious cracks in the walls. 

 The spire was blown down in 1703, its neglected state no doubt contributing to its fall. The following 

 manuscript note by James Gilpin, Esq. Recorder of Oxford (who was born at Kington in 1709), may 

 be added, from my own collections for the history of this, my native parish. " In y great storm in y e 

 year 1703, y 6 spire of this church was blown down, and two of y 6 old bells I remember standing in y 6 



