The Grenadier — Cathedral Library and Museum — The Deanery — Pilgrim’s Hall — Precincts — Cheyney Court — Regulations of the Monastery — North side of the Cathedral — Early decay of the City — St. Peter’s Street — Middle Brooks — Old Houses.
This day was to be devoted to visiting the Cathedral library and precincts, and to taking a stroll about the streets of the city.
We again entered the lime-tree avenue and looked across the burial ground. A great improvement had been carried out within the last three years. When I was last here it was crowded with tombstones bending over to each other in various stages of decay, now it presents a pleasant sward as smooth as a bowling-green. There is a headstone close to the path recording the gallantry of twenty-three persons who died in an attempt to save the property of their master from destruction by fire. Near the south-west angle of the ground there is a better-known memorial to a less heroic man, who owes his immortality to the drollery of his epitaph. It runs as follows:—
“In Memory of
THOMAS THETCHER,
A Grenadier in the North Regt.
of the Hants Militia, who Died of a
Violent Fever contracted by Drinking
Small Beer when hot, the 12th of May,
1764. Aged 26 Years.