By Sir Charles Iiobhouse, Bart. 



75 



centuries in date ; and slabs, one with part of an inscription on it, 

 as of tombstones or screens. 



It is well known that certain excavations were made round and 

 about the manor house by Lord Webb Seymour in 1744, and certain 

 others by Mr. Wade Browne in IS I I, but I have ascertained, from 

 persons present in I S 1- \ , that the excavations then made were on a 

 different site to those I have described, and neither do these latter 

 at all correspond with those made in 1744. 



But there can, I think, be no sort of doubt that the foundations 

 now uncovered appertained to some one part or other of the ecclesi- 

 astical buildings of the Priory. It was, w r e know, by the monks of 

 St. Paneras, Lewes, that our Priory was built. It is reasonable, 

 therefore, to conclude, that in building they would follow the lines 

 of their mother Priory. It is, I believe the fact, that the various 

 orders of monks usually built on plans peculiar to the particular 

 order. I have a plan of the Lewes buildings, and I find that the 

 ecclesiastical buildings stood to the north, that directly east of these 

 was the churchyard and that west and at a right angle to them 

 stood the domestic buildings. 



I have explained in another part of my paper by what means I 

 have discovered the exact sites of the churchyard and of the domestic 

 buildings of the Priory and, these sites ascertained, I should have 

 expected to find the ecclesiastical buildings exactly where the ex- 

 cavations now open would shew them to be. My judgment is that 

 the foundations I have uncovered are cloisters, leading either to the 

 chapter house, of which Layton, in his letter to Cromwell, speaks, 

 or to a mortuary chapel, but I hardly like to venture on any con- 

 jecture, and I submit the various plans which Mr. Adye has kindly 

 drawn of the excavations, and his note thereon, for the consideration 

 of persons better able to judge. 



CHAPTER III. 



The History of our Manor. 



Our first appearance as a manor is in Domesday, 1 where I find 

 the following entries : — 



Jones's Domesday for Wiltshire p. 231. 



