178 



Notes on Churches visited in 1898. 



the founder of Merton College, Oxford, who was in holy orders in 

 1237, is said to have been Kector here. 1 He gave the advowson 

 and lands to his college, and endowed a vioarage. An alien priory 

 here was confiscated and its property given by Henry VI. to King's 

 College, Cambridge. The name of the place is doubtless due to 

 its being on the Roman road=" street town." 



Church of S. John the Baptist, Hannington. 



The plan is a simple one of nave and chancel, with west tower 

 and south porch. 



This is not the first Church which stood on this site, for the 

 south doorway of the nave and that of the porch are remains of a 

 building of the latter half of the twelfth century. The porch 

 doorway is a plain one with semicircular arch having a small 

 chamfer worked on it, and with chamfered label. The nave door- 

 way is much more elaborate and has a " button " chevron member 

 in the arch, nail-head ornament on the impost mould, and dog-tooth 

 on the label : the stops to the inner chamfer on the jambs are very 

 interesting. 



The nave was re-built early in the thirteenth century, not later 

 than 1230. It is somewhat difficult to conceive a reason for the 

 re-building of this within eighty years from its first erection, if, 

 indeed, the latter event is actually represented by the doorway. 

 — it seems more reasonable to suppose that the doorway was 

 inserted in a still older building, and re-used in the Early English 

 reconstruction. Anyhow, no part of the nave can be set down at 

 an earlier date than the first quarter of the thirteenth century. 

 The north and south walls throughout and the buttresses are of 

 that period with the exception of the easternmost bays of the north 

 and south walls, whioh were re-built, with diagonal buttresses built 

 at the angles, and a three-light square-headed window inserted on 



Jackson's A ubrey, p. 161. 



