By the Rev. Canon Eddrup. 



275 



stones lying about here and there, some fragments placed by Canon 

 Bowles in the vicarage garden at Bremhill, are all that remain of 

 the once famous abbey of Stanley. The ground is uneven, pre- 

 senting, the appearance of having been turned over in search for 

 stones. Where the Church or the other buildings stood it seems 

 useless to conjecture; Aubrey, writing more than two hundred 

 years ago, says : — " here is now scarce left any vestigium of Church 

 or house. " i 



In those early times of the foundation of the abbey the whole 

 country round Chippenham for miles and miles away, by Deny 

 Hill, Studley, Bowood, Pewsham, and through a great part of North 

 Wilts, would appear to have been a vast forest ; and the lower 

 grounds along the banks of the river were probably in great part 

 marsh and swamp. To our ideas, Lockswell, high and dry, on the 

 hill side, with its ever-flowing spring of clear pure water, would 

 seem the better site ; but the other had the advantage, so important 

 in that day, that fish ponds could be easily made and readily kept 

 filled. But when the monks first settled here it must have seemed 

 a damp and dismal spot ; and Aubrey, writing more than a hundred 

 years after the dissolution of the abbey, when the buildings had 

 been destroyed, the brotherhood long dispersed, and the place left 

 neglected, says : — " It is very rich land and lies by the river's side, 

 but in a place in the winter time altogether unpleasant." 3 But the 

 Cistercians were known as skilful and industrious cultivators, and 

 it was not long before forest was cleared and marsh reclaimed. " We 

 owe," says Hallam, 8 not by any means a friendly witness, " the 

 agricultural restoration of great part of Europe to the monks." 



Of course no trace remains of the wooden huts which the brethren 

 erected for their shelter during the brief space (but three years, it is 

 said) that they remained at Lockswell : but even after they removed 

 to Stanley it would be a long time before suitable permanent buildings 

 could be erected. Church and chapter-house and cloisters, gateway 



1 Aubrey's Wiltshire Collections (1659—1670), Jackson's edition, p. 113. 

 2 Aubrey, p. 112, 113. 

 3 Hallam, Middle Ages, ix„ ii. 



T 2 



