132 Mr. Turnbull on Chapel at Alley St. Bathans. 



feet six inches deep. In front of this chancel is a flat grave 

 stone, five feet ten inches long, one foot eight inches broad 

 at the head, or west end, and one foot five inches at the foot, 

 or east end. A bevel of about one-and-a-half inches has been 

 cut on the edges. This grave stone differs in shape from 

 most, if not all, others in this immediate district, which, so 

 far as I recollect, are always rectangular. There is no in- 

 scription or sculpture on it. It is well dressed, but the tool 

 marks on it are apparently those of a pick, not of a flat chisel. 

 In the building were found a few dressed stones for lintels, 

 and a good many pieces of what probably has been a font 

 about two feet in diameter. Some pieces of oak and large 

 iron nails have also been found ; the wood is much decayed 

 on the outside, but the heart of it is sound and hard. 



About thirty-five yards north-west of the building there 

 was found a stone coffin. It must have been a good deal 

 broken when it was deposited where it was recently found, 

 and, unfortunately, it was very much broken by the man who 

 dug it up, and who called out to another workman to come 

 and see what fine freestone rock he was hewing through. 

 The coffin is one of those cut out of a single stone, and in 

 which the form of the head and shoulders is preserved, but 

 the greatest depth of the hollow is now hardly six inches, the 

 upper edge having been broken away, although not recently. 

 It is very coarsely " scabbled " with a pick. This coffin was 

 found turned up-side down, and on it another coffin was 

 formed by flat stones being set up on edge. No remains 

 were found in either of them. The direction in which it lay 

 was nearly N.W. and S.E. In the same part of the field was 

 found a stone whorl, an inch and three-quarters in diameter, 

 flat on one side but rounded on the other, and the rounded 

 surface ornamented with circular grooves cut in it. Whorls 

 of this shape are, I believe, understood to have been fixed on 

 the end of the spindle to prevent the thread, wound on it, 

 from slipping off. There was also found an instrument of 

 lead six-and-a-quarter inches long, four-tenths of an inch 

 thick at the thickest part, terminating in a point at one end, 

 and in two pointed prongs at the other end. These prongs 

 are about two-and-a-quarter inches long. It has been sug- 

 gested that this is an instrument on which votive candles have 

 been stuck to be burned. 



The Statistical account says — " Besides the church and 

 priory of St. Bathans, a chapel was founded in this parish, but 



