A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain,
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn."
The choice of Christchurch Priory as the site for this monument was due to the fact that the poet's son, Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who erected it, lived at Boscombe Manor, between Christchurch and Bournemouth.
The tower contains a peal of eight bells. These are all old; the fifth and sixth bells have fourteenth-century inscriptions round their crowns, the others appear to have been cast early in the fifteenth century.
