By Harold Brakspear, F.S.A. 465 



as "ill done," and adds that 



When the great rejoicing was on the King's birthday, 1660, for the 



return of King Charles II., here were so many and so great vollies of 



shot, by the inhabitants of the Hundred, that the noise so shook the 



pillars of the Tower, that one pillar and the two parts above fell down 



that night. 1 



From the end of the seventeenth century to the end of the 



nineteenth the church remained without much alteration, save that 



about 1830 the present seats and gallery were put up, new tracery 



was inserted in the sixteenth-century west window, and the present 



lath and plaster vaulting erected over the fifth and sixth bays, 



under the direction of the late Mr. Goodrich, a Bath architect. 



In 1899, the building having' in many places become dangerous 

 a scheme of repair was undertaken through the influence of the late 

 Bishop of Bristol, and carried out under the charge of the writer. 

 This work continued off and on for some years, but the only real 

 alterations to the general appearance of the structure were the 

 building up of the ruinous gap in the south wall of the nave and 

 the repair of the two bays of the aisle beneath. While these works 

 were in progress excavations were made, through a grant from the 

 Society of Antiquaries, on the site of the south transept and quire, 

 but nothing was found except a small patch of tile paving. The 

 writer was afterwards told that when this part of the church was 

 in private hands there were great and ugly heaps of debris, so that, 

 to make it tidy, the then owner contracted with a builder to level 

 the ground for what he could get out of it ! 



Later in 1910, through the generosity of Mr. E. S. Mackirdy, the 

 owner of the site of the cloister, and a small grant from the Society 

 of Antiquaries, further excavations were made to trace the cloister 

 and site of the surrounding buildings, which will be described later. 



The Precinct. 

 Long before Malmesbury was walled, the monastery was es- 

 tablished at the northern end of the hill upon which the town 

 now stands. The precinct upon the hill contains about six acres, 2 

 1 Wiltshire Collections (Devizes, 1862), p. 255. 

 s The Vol. Eccl. (II., p. 119) gives the area of the site that the building 

 extended over as six acres. 



