By Harold Brakspear, F.S.A. 473 



century, and the extra weight caused the heavy pillars to subside 

 some 9in. At the period when the lantern was done away with, 

 vaulting springers were inserted in each angle, and wall ribs were 

 put at the same time as far as the dividing piers of the old lantern. 

 These were afterwards completed to a different section, and a lierne 

 vault with large bosses added. 



A high spire was added to the tower in later times, apparently 

 formed of wood and lead, and this is what Leland records l to have 

 fallen in hominum memoria. If it fell before the Suppression it did 

 little damage, as the church was standing complete when the Valor 

 was taken in 1534, and it is unlikely Leland would have used the 

 expression in hominum memoria if it had fallen afterwards or 

 within two years of his visit. Over a hundred years later the 

 memory of the spire and its fall was still fresh in the countryside, 

 for Aubrey tells that 



Hughes of Wootton Bassett saies that the steeple of Malmesbury Abbey- 

 was as high almost as Paule's and that when the steeple fell the ball of 

 it fell as far off as the Griffin. 2 

 In 1634 a certain tourist visited Malmesbury and says, " her 

 great High Tower at the upper end of the high Altar much decay'd 

 and ruinated, the Angle there clene decayd." 3 This tower was 

 little more than the four arches as shown in the drawing in the 

 Monasticon of twenty -one years later. The weak angle, which was 

 the south-east, as already shown, fell in 1660, bringing down the 

 east and south arches, and in this condition it remains to-day. 



There were nine bells in the two towers at the Suppression, 

 estimated to weigh 15cwt.,* and Aubrey says that in the central 

 tower " was a great Bell, called St. Aldhelm's Bell, which was rung 

 when it did thunder and lighten to send the tempest from the 

 Town into the Country." 5 Brown Willis records 



that the Steeples were replenished with several Bells, no less than ten, 

 as the Inhabitants informed me, hanging together in the middle Tower 

 and two in the western one. On one of them was this Inscription : 

 Elysiam coeli nunquam conscendit ad aulam, 

 Qui furat hanc nolam Aldelmi sede beati. 



1 Supra p. 464. 3 Wiltshire Collections, p. 256. 

 3 Graphic and Historical Illustrator, E.W.Brayley (London, 1834), p. 411. 

 4 See Appendix II. 5 Wiltshire Collections, p. 255. 



