By the Rev. J. J. Reynolds. 



259 



some of whom would have the name of the town derived from 

 them. We have no detailed account of the buildings of the Abbey 

 as first erected. We know however from Eddius 1 a Saxon 

 historian of the 8th century, that in his time his countrymen 

 spared neither cost nor labour in their ecclesiastical buildings ; and 

 under so skilful and munificent a monarch as Alfred, a great 

 encourager of architecture as indeed of all the Arts, great advance 

 would doubtless be made. The learned Grimbald afterwards Abbot 

 of Winchester, the greatest architect of that day, had arrived in 

 England on Alfred's invitation, three years before the Abbey of 

 Shaftesbury was completed, and no doubt gave this royal foundation 

 a full share of his attention. In 888 the Abbey was duly conse- 

 crated to the service of Almighty God and the pious memory of 

 St. Mary the Yirgin. Shaftesbury was then in the Diocese of 



1 Eddius, c. 22 thus describes the church of Hexham, built about two hundred 

 years before the abbey. I use Whitaker's translation. " The deepness of 

 which in the ground — all with the rooms founded of stones admirably polished, 

 but having above ground one room of many parts, supported on various columns 

 and on many underground chapels, yet possessing a wonderful length and height 

 of walls, and by various passages winding in lines, carried along spiral stairs 

 sometimes up sometimes down." " Nor did I ever hear of any other house on 

 this side of the Alpine mountains built equal with this." Richard the Prior of 

 Hexham about 100 years after the Conquest gives an almost similar account of 

 his church. He speaks of Wilfrid having " founded (it) below" (I again use 

 Whitaker's translation), " with great labour in crypts and oratories subterraneous 

 with winding passages to them." The walls he erected of immense length and 

 height, supported on columns of squared, varied, well-polished stones, and 

 divided into three stories. The walls themselves with the capitals by which the 

 walls w T ere supported, as also the covered ceiling of the sanctuary he decorated 

 with histories and curious figures projecting in sculpture from the stone, with a 

 grateful variety of pictures and a wonderful beauty of colours. He also sur- 

 rounded the very body of the church with chapels lateral and subterraneous on 

 every side, which with wonderful and inexplicable artifice, he separated by 

 walls and spiral stairs above and below." " But in the very stairs and upon 

 them, he caused to be made of stone, ways of ascent, places of landing, and a 

 variety of windings, some up and some down, yet so artificially, that an innu- 

 merable multitude of men might be there, and stand all about the very body of 

 the church, but not be visible to any that were below in it." — Such is the 

 account given by contemporary historians of the Saxon Church of Hexham. 

 Might not our abbey have been equally splendid ? The massive groining of a 

 very early date of a "Chapel lateral and subterraneous" now in course of 

 excavation seems to argue as much. 



