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Stanley Ahbey \ 



in Surrey, claimed to be the first Cistercian house in England, 

 though its claim was disputed by Furness, in Lancashire, the line 

 ruins of which are known to those who have visited the English 

 lakes. And it may interest any Oxford men who may chance to be 

 present, if I remind them that among the latest was the Cistercian 

 house of St. Bernard, founded (1437) by Archbishop Chichele, the 

 founder of All Souls, as a home for those Cistercian students who 

 went to reside at the University. You will remember the statue of 

 St. Bernard in the niche in the tower gateway of St. John's : and 

 three sides of the first quadrangle, with the chapel and hall, form a 

 portion of the old buildings purchased after the Dissolution by Sir 

 Thomas White, the founder of St. John Baptist's College in Oxford. 



Stanley Abbey is in Bremhill parish, and is now included in the 

 Ecclesiastical district of Derry Hill. It owes its foundation to 

 Matilda, or Maud, the daughter of Henry I., the widow of the 

 Emperor Henry V., and the mother, by her second husband — 

 Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou — of our King Henry II. 

 Stanley Abbey was first founded (1151) as an offshoot of the Cis- 

 tercian abbey of Quarr, near Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, and lands 

 were given to the monks to establish an abbey at Lockswell, in the 

 forest of Chippenham : but the brethren soon moved down the hill 

 to Stanley, some two miles north-east on the left bank of the little 

 river Marden, which flows into the Avon. Here they fixed them- 

 selves on a slight eminence rising from the bank of the river, where | 

 the valley through which it flows begins to open out into the plain 

 round Chippenham, between the hills now known as Bencroft and 

 Derry Hill. The railway from Chippenham to Calne runs through 

 the site, and the Wilts and Berks Canal is carried across the river 

 just below : the position of the moat and the fishponds can still be 

 traced. 1 In the older buildings of Stanley Abbey farm, erected on 

 the site, I remember seeing some years ago a square- headed 

 window, whieh may have formed part of some of the out-buildings ; 

 this was removed when the old farm was made into cottages : 

 and now, a portion of a broken stone coffin in the yard, a few 

 \ 



1 See map. 



