EDITOR'S PREFACE.

Owing to circumstances over which I had no control, the reproduction of Canon Jones's work has been long delayed; and this renders it necessary that something more of a preface should be prefixed than I had originally intended. Of course both the Publisher and I meant the volume to be little more than a reproduction of a work which was valuable in its original form, and which had become inconveniently scarce and inaccessible; it was not to be a new book by a new author founded on one that was growing obsolete; though something was to be done towards filling up gaps in the original work, and bringing it up to date.

Interesting and markworthy as the old town is in many respects, it is in and around the Saxon Church of St. Laurence that the interest especially gathers and centres; and it would be scarcely right to pass by unnoticed the mass of erudite criticism which has, since the inception of this present work, been directed against the current opinion as to the date and authorship of the Church. I refer particularly to Professor Baldwin Brown's volumes, and to the article founded thereon by the Rev. H. J. Dukinfield Astley. Space does not permit of anything approaching a satisfactory discussion of the question, even if I, "impar congressus," could venture on a controversy with an adversary carrying such heavy guns as does Professor Brown. I will simply remark that he seems to have had much difficulty and hesitation in coming to the opinion he expresses, viz., that the little Church dates from the latter part of the 10th century. He rests this view chiefly on the presence of probably late features, viz., pilasters and double-splayed windows, though he acknowledges that "Bradford-on-Avon appears in general character a singularly early Church."

He remarks, also, ii, 325-6, that "in Saxon history periods of brilliant promise are succeeded by long eras of national eclipse"; and that it is quite likely that "the age of conversion was one of such stimulus to the artistic powers of the people that a level of effort and achievement was reached which subsequent generations were not able to maintain." This was just the period of Wilfrid and Aldhelin, and they may probably have come into contract; as Wilfrid withh is masons and singers is said, during his exile from Northumbria, to have wandered for some years about Mercia, whose frontier was close to Bradford. (Hodgkin, P. History of England, i, 194-5). By the way, the, perhaps, most notable of Professor Brown's late features, the long and short work, is not present here, though it appears at Monkwearmouth, which he puts into the earliest class. But after all, are these doubtful architectural details sufficient to weigh in the balance against the testimony of William of Malmesbury, who lived near at hand, and knew the local traditions? If the Church had been built only 150 years before William wrote, is it conceivable that the fact could have been already forgotten? It has been suggested that Aldhelm might have built a wooden ecclesiola, which the Danes might have burned; but how does that consist with the reputation of Aldhelm as a builder and a judge of good stone? See Aubrey for the tradition to that effect! Doulting, where the first Church was of wood, was in a woodland, not in a freestone country, as Bradford is. And I cannot believe that the Danish buccaneers ever took the laborious and bootless trouble of pulling down a solid stone building of this sort, though they might not stick at burning whatever was burnable.

The Bishop of Bristol's paper on "Pre-Norman Sculptured Stones," in Miss Dryden's "Memorials of old Wiltshire," incidentally gives strong support to the prevailing opinion as to Aldhelm's work, (which is also evidently the opinion of Bishop Browne himself) by pointing out the Lombardic, and therefore early, character of some of the sculpture in the

carved stones preserved in the north porch of the little Church. He also notes that the pattern on one of these stones is found in a Durham manuscript dating as early as Aldhelm's time. See page 151. The statement there is only partially correct. These sculptured stones were brought from Trinity Church, it is true; but we have no other reason to think they ever really belonged to it. They could hardly have done so, as we have the expert testimony of Bishop Browne to their extreme antiquity, unless there was once another Saxon Church on the site of the present partly Norman one.

I should like to make a correction here in reference to Alveston, an appurtenance of the Manor of Bradford which is mentioned in Domesday Book, and the location of which puzzled Canon Jones. Since the body of this work was printed I have become satisfied that the place mentioned, which contained seven hides, was Alvediston, in the far south of the County, which certainly belonged, like Bradford, to the Abbey of Shaftesbury.

It only remains for me to record my sincere thanks to those who have assisted me in my work, of whom one, Mr. Charles Septimus Adye, Architect to the Restoration Committee, has unhappily already passed away; but there remain Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse, Bart., Mrs. Alexander Mackay, who kindly gave me access to Canon Jones's unpublished MSS., and a few others.

THE CHANTRY,

BRADFORD-ON-AVON,

May, 1907.

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

The Publisher has only to accept all blame for delay in the publication of this history, to apologise to those subscribers who were led to expect the large paper copies in the spring of 1906, and to ask for lenient treatment for this his first serious excursion into publishing. He would add his thanks to the Editor by whose labour of love it has alone been possible to publish this volume. The new matter is [in square brackets in italic type].

BRADFORD-ON-AVON, 1907.