Excursion on Saturday, August 21st. 



163 



" To the Editor of the Devizes Gazette. 

 il Sir, — I observe, by your report of the proceedings of the British 

 Archaeological Association, on the 21st, that my suggestion that the 

 Conduit House on Bowden Hill was probably erected in the reign 

 of Edward VI. was generally taken exception to. I am, glad, 

 therefore, that I did furnish Mr. Wright with that suggestion, or, 

 apparently, the building' would have been, without question, set down 

 by the authorities there present to a wrong date, very much earlier 

 than the true one. I wish, indeed, they could prove their case. I 

 should be delighted to find that I have there, really, the Conduit 

 House of the nuns and not merely its successor, a mediaeval and not 

 a Renaissance building. But I cannot see a chance of such a happy 

 subversion of my present opinion. Mr. Christian is reported as 

 having assigned " the stone roof, the slabs overlying and moulded 

 at the overlap/'' and, I presume, the transverse arch ribs which 

 support it, without doubt, to the fourteenth century, and to have 

 divorced the doorway from the rest of the work, and treated it as 

 an insertion of the seventeenth century, later than its real date. 

 Now, I venture to say that not one of these gentlemen, who are 

 skilled architectural critics, would adhere to his opinion, if he had 

 an opportunity of thoroughly examining the other architectural re- 

 mains of this place. There is no part of this little building which 

 does not, to my mind, proclaim it the work of Sir William Shering- 

 ton. The plinth, or base moulding of the walls, the doorway and 

 the tabling of the roof, are all to be matched in his work at the 

 Abbey. The arched ribs, which support the roof, have a plain 

 circular section, and such a section might be found in fourteenth 

 century work, but they have not the look of fourteenth century 

 work. On the other hand, the vaulted ceiling of the lowest 

 room in the tower at the Abbey, which is entirely the work of 

 Sherington, has ribs of a plain circular section. The projecting 

 mouldings on the stones of the roof, which overlap the joints, may 

 be observed in the tabling of Sherington's buttresses and chimneys 

 at the Abbey. Over the doorway, and also on the east wall, there 

 are the remains of some elaborate Renaissance ornament, very much 

 worn by the weather. When I was examining the building, one 



