Unfortunately, the Abbey underwent a “restoration” in 1789, when the church was despoiled of many of its fittings; and chantry chapels and other valuable objects of interest went down under the hand of the “restorer.” But Sir Gilbert Scott, in 1865, restored the church at the expense of the late Baron Hambro, and left the Abbey in its present beautiful condition, and, as far as was possible, in its original state.
The Tabernacle.
The view of the church at the beginning of this chapter will save the necessity of a description of its exterior. But the interior contains many things which demand notice.
And first of all must be mentioned the “ornament,” which many antiquaries consider to be a Tabernacle for reserving the Eucharist. This very beautiful and richly carved “Sacrament-house” dates from the fifteenth century, and is made of oak in the form of a spire composed of four storeys, the lowest containing the opening through which the reserved elements may have been passed. It is not in its original position, but is now fastened to the west wall of the south transept beneath the triforium.
The great altar-screen is a very lofty, beautiful, and peculiarly rich construction, even though the two long rows of ornamental niches now lack the statues of the saints that once stood in them—saints with “very bluff countenances, painted in very bright colours and heavily gilded.” On its lower portion there is a Latin inscription, which bids prayers for the souls of William Middleton, Abbot of Milton, and Thomas Wilken, Vicar of the parish, who worthily decorated (“honorifice depinxerunt”) the screen in 1492. The three stone sedilia in the sanctuary are fine specimens. The bosses throughout the church are of very rich design.
The Abbey also contains two fifteenth century oil paintings of a crude description, one of which represents Athelstan, the founder, giving to the first head of the monastery a model of the minster (with three spires)[25] over which he was to preside. The other painting is supposed to represent Athelstan’s mother—Egwynna, “femina illustris.”[26]
The tombs of the abbots within the Abbey are most interesting. In front of the altar steps there is a Purbeck marble grave-slab of the fourteenth century, which was once inlaid with the brass figure of an abbot clad in pontificalia, with a marginal Latin inscription in Lombardic capitals:
ABBA : VALTERE : TE : FATA : CITO : RAPVERE : TE : RADINGA : DEDIT : SED : MORS : MALE : NOS : TVA : LEDIT.
This is the slab of an Abbot of Milton whose Christian name was Walter, and who was formerly a monk of Reading, probably Walter de Sydelinge, who died in 1315. In the north transept there is a thirteenth century grave-slab of another abbot. This slab is also of Purbeck marble, but the upper portion is broken off. The remaining portion shows part of an incised figure of an abbot, with pastoral staff, chasuble, stole, maniple, alb, and an imperfect marginal inscription in Norman French: