SELBORNE SOCIETY NOTICES 
197 
now we can see nothing more in situ than one garden arch above ground 
and the foundations of a little Chapter House, with some fragments of stone 
and a few bits of tile to stand for the artistic work of the gigantic building 
that previously occupied this ground and covered four acres. The trouble 
is not so much that the material building has passed away as that no record 
is left on the minds and hearts of men. Of the huge number of parchment 
and vellum rolls, missals, deeds and legal documents that must have been 
executed on this spot not one is known to remain. There is no biography 
as of Abbot Sampson of Bury St. Edmunds, to inspire a nineteenth century sage 
with his personality and his wonderful works. There is no great Gundulph of 
Rochester, or Hugh of Lincoln, or Poor of Salisbury, to astonish subsequent ages 
with his architectural triumphs. There is no ecclesiastic statesman such as 
Langton, Anselm, or Lanfranc, Becket or Wolsey, to leave his mark on the pages 
of history. The mitred Abbots of Chertsey were great men in their own time 
but they have hardly left even their names behind. Such ‘footprints in the 
sands of time ’ as they ever impressed have been washed away by the advancing 
tide, and again reverting to Ozymandias — we may almost say, speaking figura- 
tively — ‘ nothing beside remains ; round the decay of this colossal wreck, 
boundless and bare, but lone and level meads stretched far away.’ 
“The first Abbey was built in the seventh century. A Christian King of 
Mercia had owned this particular piece of land. His name was Penda and he 
appears to have shared the religious zeal of his father-in-law, Oswald of North- 
umbria, and his successor Wulpher had a Viceroy, Frith wold, who built the 
Abbey in 666, which must have occupied a kind of border position between the 
two great kingdoms of Wessex and Kent, and afforded a very suitable place for 
a church to secure a strong holding. Of the building of that period, doubtless 
of wood, nothing remains. It was either this Abbey or its successor that was 
burned by the Danes about S80, and these wild men and pagan men had the run 
of the Thames Valley, until Alfred made head against them and finally chased 
them to their ships after many a battle. It seems strange to think that this very 
piece of ground was unmistakably ravaged by the piratic Northmen 1,100 
years ago. 
“The first stone building dates from 1100, and a few fragments of this 
Norman work I shall be able to show you. It was successively restored by the 
early English architects, and beautified by shafts of Purbeck inset into the 
clustered columns. Many of these shafts 1 can show you both in the original 
polished state and in a burnt condition, and the plinths and capitals appear to 
have withstood the ravages of time better than the softer stone. Of the appear- 
ance of the Abbey, or at any rate of its church, we have unfortunately no 
accurate view in Dugdale’s Monasticon, or any other of the medieval treatises 
on the ecclesiastical buildings of the period, and the only representation that 
survives is the very rough and archaic drawing from the Abbey seal, of which I 
am able to show you copies. It would appear that the church, 275 feet long, in 
size like a cathedral, had an apse and apsidal ends to the transepts. It was 
gothic, with nave and chancel, triforium and clear-storey. There was a tower 
and a spire upon it, and if the proportions of the seal can be relied upon the 
height must have been not much less than 200 feet. How completely the very 
church has vanished appears from a curious discrepancy betw-een Mr. Pocock’s 
work in 1855 and Mr. Angel’s in 1861. I submit the plans and drawings of both 
these gentlemen, and you will see that Mr. Pocock makes the nave of the church 
to cross our garden at about 30 feet from the house, while Mr. Angel fits it in to 
the Chapter House that you have seen, and brings it down on the opposite side 
of the drive, where he claims to have traced a number of foundations. Now Mr. 
Angel was an architect of eminence, whose work in the City of London is well 
known, and I prefer to follow his lead, glad as I should be to have the bases of 
the great Abbey piers actually under the soil of our own garden. The question 
will no doubt be asked, how could it possibly happen that this huge building 
became so completely dismantled and torn to pieces as to leave no trace? The 
answer appears to be this : When the Abbey was confiscated, the lands, which 
were considered valuable, were given to some courtier or other, but the actual 
fabric of the buildings was No-man’s land for one hundred years, and the in- 
habitants of Chertsey at the time were shrewd enough to take away that which 
no one claimed, and use it for their own advantage. All through the town of 
