By J. U. Powell, M.A. 



119 



part of the valley, a district in which its estates were so large, and 

 which was near at hand. For by this time the district was as 

 settled as it is now with manors and homesteads. Indeed, as 

 early as about 930 we find the abbey of Glastonbury in possession 

 of Monkton, which was named from its owners, and Longbridge. 

 It is true that the only church in the Deverill valley definitely 

 mentioned in Domesday Book is that of Brixton, although a priest 

 is mentioned as holding some land in Hill or Longbridge ; but it 

 must be remembered that no return was made of churches unless 

 they held glebe lands. Itinerant priests on their journeys would 

 gather listeners in the villages before churches were built, and it 

 was not till a later century that the fresh spirit infused by the 

 energetic Normans built and endowed churches. There are traces 

 of a Saxon Church at Mere (Wilts Arch. Mag., No. 86, p. 22), and, 

 as we have seen, almost certainly a Saxon Church at Bishopstrow ; 

 there are remains of a Saxon cross of the tenth century at Codford 

 St. Peter; 1 and at Knook Church probably a portion of a Saxon 

 cross (Wilts Arch. Mag., No. 79, p. 46 ; there are remains of Early 

 Norman work at Sutton (St. Leonard's) and Codford St. Mary ; a 

 Norman font at Codford St. Peter ; Norman work at Stockton, 

 Heytesbury (granted in 1115 to Salisbury Cathedral), Longbridge 

 (1130 — 1150), and a portion of a Norman font at Norton. 



There were churches in the 12th century at Hill Deverill, 

 Horningsham, Boyton, Tytherington, Upton, Knook, and a chapel 

 of Mere, which has now disappeared, dedicated to St. Andrew, at 

 Kingston Deverill. And at some time between 1198 and 1211 the 

 Abbot of Bee conveyed to the Church of Sarum the rights which 

 they had in the church of Brixton, and Heytesbury was a Collegiate 

 Church in 1165. Here it will be well to give the evidence which 

 architecture affords in the case of the following Churches. 1 Codford 

 St. Mary has work of about 1180 ; Upton has work of the end of 

 12th or beginning of the 13th ; Boyton of the middle of the 13th ; 



1 For a complete list of Churches in England that exhibit traces of Saxon 

 building see Professor Baldwin Brown's paper in The Builder for May 2nd, 

 1903, and his Arts in Early England, vol. 2 (Murray, 1903). 



1 See Mr. Ponting's paper in Wilts Arch. Mag., No. 81, p. 245. 



