By C. E. Ponting, F.S.A. 589 



with tracery, and as this seemed improbable — the window being in 

 an eighteenth century wall — I made enquiry of the artist who 

 supplied the sketch to Mr. Bradley. He admitted that, having 

 paid a fruitless journey to Pewsey in search of the oratory tracery 

 (which is supposed to have found a home there), he took an artist's 

 license and introduced tracery into the two-light window, with 

 the view to making a pretty drawing, and without any intention of 

 its reproduction. This drawing was made from an older one which 

 did not show the tracery. 



I have further ascertained from the builder who did the work, 

 that he cut off the oratory window above the transom for the 

 gentleman who (to quote Mr. Bradley) committed " a most de- 

 plorable act of vandalism," but that the two-light window was 

 then, as it now exists, without tracery. I am satisfied that the 

 drawing misled the author of the book to believe that tracery 

 existed in " two of the windows." 



In 1908 the stone wall on the north with its timber framing 

 over gave place to a new wall, with the stone doorway re-built in 

 it, further east, while what was left of the oratory window was 

 superseded by the one shown in the sketch of the interior above 

 referred to. It is very much to be regretted that this further 

 spoliation of the oldest bit of a mediaeval dwelling in Marlborough 

 (if we except the small fragment of wall remaining of the St. 

 Margaret's Priory) should have been found necessary, and that the 

 old work could not have been retained in the alterations, to meet 

 modern uses. 



