OLD ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. T6l 



time, within the Preceptory. There was the constant witness of 

 lavish hospitality, and of the keen desire to minister to the sick 

 and afflicted. And, at heart, these men were deeply religious, 

 and probably were the means of quickening the society around 

 them. 



It was in this period, under the Bakepuze family, with 

 its strong Church leanings, and during the first century of the 

 Preceptory's work, that the church at Barrow lost its Anglo- 

 Saxon character, and became the lofty and spacious sanctuary 

 which we see before us, with diminished glory, at the present 

 day. The church at Twyford had profited also by the zeal and 

 activity of those times. A fine Norman arch is still preserved, a 

 proof amongst a thousand others elsewhere, that the Hilde- 

 brandine movement, and the new enthusiasm which came from 

 abroad, were leaving the marks of their influence in obscure and 

 unlikely corners of the land. And there was much, too, that 

 was Early English. The glowing interest was not quickly 

 quenched. It was kept alive for many generations. We see, 

 then, once more, an awakening of religious life, similar, in its 

 zeal and energy, to that earlier period which we have witnessed 

 under the Anglo-Saxons. The Crusades must have contri- 

 buted something at least, in these parts, to that religious revival. 

 In fact, there is, in this neighbourhood, a very strong crusading 

 tradition, which shows how much men's thoughts were coloured 

 by the movement, and how durable were its effects. The Hos- 

 pitallers' Church at Barrow, and the Preceptory at Arleston, are 

 not the only evidence which we possess of that far distant 

 enterprise. Swarkestone Bridge was built, if the story be true, 

 because of the death by drowning of two knights returning from 

 the Crusades. Anchor Church became the solitary cell of a 

 knight who found that his lady had proved false on his return 

 from the Far East. The Findern family, settled on our borders, 

 were staunch Crusaders, and the Potlac cedar, in itself, or 

 through some ancient predecessor, is still referred to as an 

 interesting survival of those distant travels. 



One close link of connection with another part of Derbyshire, 

 ii 



