On one,
however, I read the date 1850 and the name of a layman; for the
tombstones were all modern, the humid English atmosphere giving them
their mossy look of antiquity, and the crosier had been assumed only as a
pretty device.
Close beside the ruins there is a large, old stone farm-house, which must
have been built on the site of a part of the Priory,--the cells,
dormitories, refectory, and other portions pertaining to the monks' daily
life, I suppose, and built, no doubt, with the sacred stones. I should
imagine it would be a haunted house, swarming with cowled spectres. We
wished to see the interior of the church, and procured a guide from this
farm-house,--the sexton, probably,--a gray-haired, ruddy, cheery, and
intelligent man, of familiar though respectful address. The entrance of
the church was undergoing improvement, under the last of the abbots, when
the Reformation occurred; and it has ever remained in an unfinished
state, till now it is mossy with age, and has a beautiful tuft of
wall-flowers growing on a ledge over the Gothic arch of the doorway. The
body of the church is of much anterior date, though the oaken roof is
supposed to have been renewed in Henry VIII's time.
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