332 The Fifty-Eighth General Meeting. 



Athelstan's days, is now proposed to be rated for the first time by a 

 levelling County Council, which apparently cares nothing for the 

 preservation of one of the most interesting evidences of historical 

 continuity to be found in the whole of England. 



Thence the Members walked to the Abbey Church, where they 

 were met by MR. H. BRAKSPEAR, F.S.A., who in an interesting 

 discourse on the building, touched on various points on which new 

 evidence had lately come to light — such, for instance, as the date 

 of the fall of the central spire, evidence which will, it is hoped, 

 shortly be published. He also described the result of certain ex- 

 cavations recently made by him on the site of the cloister to the 

 north of the church, and poured contempt on the theory of the 

 "Watching Loft" on the south side of the nave. It was, he 

 asserted, neither more nor less than an organ loft for the small 

 " pair of organs " of the 14th century. Thence the party, num- 

 bering sixty-eight, passed on into the garden of the Abbey House, 

 where, by the kindness of MR. E. S. MACKIRDY, the owner, the 

 tea given by the Committee was arranged. What remains of the 

 vaulted undercroft on which the house is built, possibly originally 

 that of the infirmary, was visited, and then the Members separated, 

 some visiting a house on the north side of Oxford Street, with a 

 most unpromising exterior, now occupied by Mr. Lockstone as a 

 grocer's shop, which contains, running right up from the cellar to 

 the roof, a remarkably interesting wooden staircase of about the 

 time of James 11. 



THE ANNIVERSARY DINNER of the Society was held at the 

 Bell Hotel, at 7, p.m., MR. W. HEWARD BELL being in the chair, 

 in the absence of the President, and at 8.30 the Members assembled 

 at the Council Chamber for the Conversazione, fifty-five being 

 present. Proceedings opened with an address by THE REV. W. 

 SYMONDS, on "PARISHES LOST TO WILTSHIRE," after which 

 THE REV. E. H. GODDARD gave a short account of the very 

 interesting series of Church plate from neighbouring parishes which 

 had been got together for exhibition, and on the four beautiful 

 maces of Malmesbury, which, together with some of their old 



