CLIFTON HUNDRED 



CAMPTON 



OSBORN OF ChiCKBANDS, 



baronet, Argent a bend 

 between tzvo lions sable. 



obedient and peaceful."' Sir Peter Osborn died in 



1653, and was succeeded by his son John, who was 



created a baronet in 1662. On the latter's death in 



1699, the manor passed to his 



son John, who held it till 1720. 



His son John having died in 



1 7 1 9, it passed to his grandson, 



Dan vers, who died in 1753, 



and left the manor to George, 



his son and heir. A recovery 



was suffered in 1 794 for the 



purpose of barring all estates 



male and remainders,"' and 



the manor has continued in 



the possession of the Osborns 



up to the present day, the 



present lord of the manor 



being Sir Algernon Kerr Butler Osborn, bart., a 



great-great-grandson of Sir George Osborn mentioned 



above."' 



The buildings of Chicksands Priory stand on gently 

 sloping ground, a tributary of the Ivel flowing in an 

 easterly direction through the park, a little to the 

 south of the monastic site. To the north the ground 

 rises in open grass land, with woods on the higher 

 point, and from this direction the water supply of 

 the priory must have been drawn. The park is of 

 considerable extent, and is well timbered, the low 

 ground by the stream being a favourite haunt of wild- 

 fowl at all times of the year, and in the season wood- 

 cock are fairly plentiful in a wood through which the 

 stream runs. 



Houses of the Gilbertine order, to which the 

 priory of Chicksands belonged, are few in number, and 

 their remains very scanty. Chicksands is therefore of 

 exceptional interest, as it preserves in a most unusual 

 state of completeness all four sides of one of the 

 cloisters of such a house. Of the church only part of 

 the south wall remains, and the second cloister, which 

 probably stood to the north of the church, is entirely 

 destroyed. Externally the building is of little in- 

 terest, both Ware, in 1750, and James Wyatt at 

 the end of the century, having done their best to 

 reduce it to a characterless regularity, and having 

 destroyed nearly every ancient feature. A compari- 

 son of Buck's drawing of 1730 with the present 

 appearance throws much light on the methods em- 

 ployed ; the projecting end of the west range was 

 cut away, the gables destroyed, and mechanical copies 

 of two types of the mediaeval windows were 

 monotonously reproduced at regular intervals in 

 both stories. The old roof, fortunately, was not 

 much tampered with, and its scale and pitch give a 

 dignity to the building which the eighteenth-century 

 detail cannot entirely destroy. 



The front entrance is now in the middle of the 

 eastern range, and opens to a hall which takes up the 

 whole of the ground floor, the main staircase 

 being opposite to the entrance. To the right are 

 the kitchens and offices, in a comparatively modern 

 wing, built on the site of the church, and to the 

 left is a passage to the dfcing-room and library 

 beyond, both in the southern wing. The ground 

 floor of the western wing is partly a chapel, partly 

 a lumber-room, and is the best preserved part of 



the monastic buildings. All the early work appears 

 to be nearly contemporary, c. 1230, and the 

 general disposition of the building was as follows : — 

 The north side of the quadrangle was formed by the 

 church, with the north walk of the cloister set against 

 its south wall. On the other three sides the ground 

 story was divided into two spans by a row of pillars 

 or a solid wall, the latter arrangement obtaining on 

 the south and east, where the inner divisions formed 

 the cloister walks ; these were lighted by wide four- 

 light windows with tracery under low four-centred 

 heads, three on each side, being insertions of fifteenth- 

 century date. There is nothing to show what the 

 previous arrangement was. The eastern range was 

 widened by Wyatt at the expense of the cloister ; the 

 new work, which contains the principal staircase, pro- 

 jecting 1 8 ft. 6 in., from the old line ; and at the same 

 time the central walls in the south and east ranges were 

 taken down. The staircase window, which is a copy 

 of the cloister windows, is filled with broken fragments 

 of old glass, collected at a time when little was 

 thought of such matters, from churches in the neigh- 

 bourhood, while other pieces came from Notley 

 Abbey. On the west the fourth walk of the clo ster 

 was either open to the sky, or covered with a wooden 

 pentice set against the east side of the western range. 

 The only part of the ground story of the quad- 

 rangle which now retains much trace of its original 

 arrangement is the western range, which is vaulted for 

 its whole length in two spans, with octagonal central 

 shafts and half-octagonal corbels in the walls. The 

 vault is of seven bays, the northern of which formed 

 the outer parlour, or passage from the cloister to 

 the courtyard west of the buildings ; of the remain- 

 ing bays, two are now a lumber-room, two the 

 chapel, and two at the south end a library. This 

 end of the range formerly projected southward beyond 

 the line of the southern range, but the projection 

 was cut away by the eighteenth-century architects, 

 and the last bay of the vault is incomplete. The 

 east wa'l of the range ran through to the southern 

 end, but it has been pulled down at this part, and a 

 third span of vaulting added, in imitation of the older 

 work. The first-floor rooms are fine and lofty, but 

 with the exception of that at the south-west angle of 

 the block, where a fifteenth-century oriel window 

 remains in the east wall, filled with pieces of old 

 stained glass,"" they have no ancient features. With 

 the roofs, however, it is a different matter. In 

 both east and south ranges there is clear evidence that 

 the middle part of the upper floor was occupied by a 

 fine room with an open timber roof, while the rooms 

 on either side had flat ceilings, and were evidently of 

 less importance. In the southern range this was 

 doubtless the frater, while in the eastern the principal 

 room would naturally be the dorter. The western 

 range would contain the quarters of the lay brothers or 

 sisters, and perhaps the guest-hall over. The ground 

 stories of the east and south ranges, being divided longi- 

 tudinally by walls, could not have contained rooms of 

 importance, and the chapter-house doubtless projected 

 to the east of the former. Its site is now covered by a 

 carriage drive, and it is worthy of note that part of the 

 Purbeck marble effigy of a woman, with a shield at 

 her feet, of thirteenth-century style, was found in 



1^7 CaL of Com. for Compounding^ iii, 



1975- 



"3 Close, 34 Geo. Ill, pt. 13, m. Z3 



2 



(12) : Recov. R. Hil. 34 Geo. Ill, rot. 



220. "» G. E. C. Baronetage. 



^^ On the stonework of this window 



is an inscription, obviously modern, but 

 dated 1 1 19. See a paper in Assoc, Archit, 

 Soc. Rep. viii, 329. 



35 



