2G0 



Ancient Chapels, 8fc, in Co. Wilts. 



Item : to the House of St. Mary of Bentle- wood, my feast- 

 day chapel furniture which I have been accustomed to carry 

 with me, except two vials of silver. I also bequeath to the 

 same House my book, called a porte-hois " (a portable book of 

 prayers, or breviary) : "also 20 cows, 300 ewes, 100 muttons, 

 32 oxen, 30 goats, and 100 porkers." No other record res- 

 pecting this house is known. It has been thought [Hist, of 

 Lacock, p. 145], that this foundation may have merged 

 in the subsequent foundation of Lacock Abbey by his widow 

 Ela, Countess of Sarum. [See Mod. Wilts, Alderbury, p. 127.] 

 Berlegh, or Barlegh Chapel, (Hundred of Bradford.) It is not 

 certain where this was. It occurs seven times in the Sarum 

 Episcopal Registers, as a chapel in the gift of the Prior of 

 Monkton Farley, from A.D. 1323 to 1349. In Domesday 

 book, mention is made of a manor of " Berrelege," which the 

 Exon Domesday places in the Hundred of Bradford. The 

 Be v. W. H. Jones, editor of the Wilts Domesday, p. 198, 

 says that the name of Berlegh is now lost, and that the manor 

 cannot be identified : but he thinks that it was probably near 

 Monkton Farley and Cumberwell. " Berrifield," " Beheld," 

 or " Bearfield," is still the name of some lands immediately 

 overhanging the town of Bradford. [See Wraxhall, South, 

 infra.~\ 



Beversbrook, near Calne, (Hundred of Calne.) A presentation 

 to a chapel here occurs in the Wilts Institutions, A.D. 1298, 

 Sir Hugh Blount being patron. 



Biddeston St. Peter's, near Chippenham, (Hundred of Chippen- 

 ham.) The small parish church of this very small parish was 

 "lamentably ruined and converted into a barn,' , in Aubrey's 



were paid to the Crown. The name of this chapel is given in the English 

 extract from Longespee's will in the History of Alderbury, as here printed, 

 " St. Mary of the Essart." What the word in the original will may be, 

 whether French or Latin, I know not : but it has been suggested to me by the 

 Rev. E. Wilton, of West Lavington, that possibly the dedication may have been 

 to "St. Mary of the Desert" — i.e. Mary of Egypt, a saint who, according to her 

 history in the Golden Legend, passed 47 years in the desert, until the hair of 

 her head provided her with a mantle down to her knees. 



