16 Restoration and the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. 



paper that I read at Warminster, 1 I described an old honse of the 

 fifteenth century, then a barn, but which was probably originally 

 the Eectory house of Mere. There was a fireplace, with a peculiar 

 device on it, which I made out to be a rebus of the Trinity. Some 

 time later I went to see the old house in Salisbury, which was being 

 restored as the Church House, and I there saw a fireplace with the 

 same device. On enquiry, I found that it had actually come from 

 Mere, so that it was the same fireplace, and it had been introduced, 

 in the Salisbury Church House, to replace the original fireplace, 

 which was in less good condition. I regretted that this fireplace 

 should have been removed from Mere, but I never thought, at the 

 time, that the old building, at Mere, had been pulled down. When 

 the Society was about to visit Mere, last year, I began to have 

 apprehensions that the building might be no longer in existence, 

 and such proved to be the case. The surprising thing, in this 

 case, is that the owner, who certainly had a regard for antiquities, 

 should have allowed the destruction. It seems to me that such a 

 society as ours should make a point of recording such transactions. 

 It would be very desirable, also, that measured drawings and 

 photographs should be made and kept, and copies distributed, if 

 possible, so that, if such demolitions cannot be prevented, at least a 

 record of the destroyed building should remain. In this case, what 

 became of the ornamental features of the building ? The roof was 

 a good one, and might, one would think, have been brought 

 in elsewhere. There was a second fireplace, and one of the original 

 timber windows. 



The old house at Woodlands, near Mere, we found uninjured, 

 but it is simply thanks to a Member of our Society, who called the 

 attention of the owner to the fact that a portion of the building, 

 which was threatened with destructive modernisation, is a chapel of 

 great interest, that the mischief was averted. As the house and 

 chapel were noticed by the late Mr. J. H. Parker, of Oxford, and 

 two illustrations were published, in his book on the Domestic 



1 Wilts Arch. Mag., vol. xvii., p. 356. 



