This great monastery in superstitious times held the first place for fame and sanctity. Here the christian doctrine first found admittance in Britain, or early tradition has amused us: it is not unlikely the fact may be true, TAB. XXXIII.though the persons and circumstances invented: however, it is not to be doubted but king Ina built their church; as one of the most ancient, so the most wealthy and magnificent, loaded with revenues by the Saxon kings, and perhaps the British before them. Truly the abbot lived in no less state than the royal donors: no wonder, when his revenue was equivalent to 40,000l. per ann. he could from the Torr see a vast tract of this rich land his own demesnes, and seven parks well stored with deer belonging to the monastery. It is walled round and embattled like a town, a mile in compass: as yet there are magnificent ruins; but within a lustrum of years, a presbyterian tenant has made more barbarous havock there, than has been since the Dissolution; for every week a pillar, a buttress, a window-jamb, or an angle of fine hewn stone, is sold to the best bidder: whilst I was there they were excoriating St. Joseph’s chapel for that purpose, and the squared stones were laid up by lots in the abbot’s kitchen: the rest goes to paving yards and stalls for cattle, or the highway. I observed frequent instances of the townsmen being generally afraid to make such purchase, as thinking an unlucky fate attends the family where these materials are used; and they told me many stories and particular instances of it: others, that are but half religious, will venture to build stables and out-houses therewith, but by no means any part of the dwelling-house. The abbot’s lodging was a fine stone building, but could not content the tenant just mentioned, who pulled it down two or three years ago, and built a new house out of it; aukwardly setting up the arms and cognisances of the great Saxon kings and princes, founders, and of the abbots, over his own doors and windows: TAB. XXXVII.my friend Mr. Strachey had taken a drawing of it very luckily just before, TAB. XXXIV.which I have put in its proper place, [plate 37]. Nothing is reserved intire but the kitchen, a judicious piece of architecture: it is formed from an octagon included in a square; four fire-places fill the four angles, having chimneys over them: in the flat part of the roof, between these, rises the arched octagonal pyramid, crowned with a double lantern, one within another: there are eight curved ribs within, which support this vault, and eight funnels for letting out the steam through windows; within which, in a lesser pyramid, hung the bell to call the poor people to the adjacent almery, whose ruins are on the north side of the kitchen: the stones of the pyramid are all cut slaunting with the same bevil to throw off the rain. They have a report in the town, that king Henry VIII. quarrelling with the abbot, threatened to fire his kitchen: to which he returned answer, That he would build such a one as all the timber in his forest should not burn.
TAB. XXXVI.
The church was large and magnificent: the walls of the choir are standing, twenty-five fathom long, twelve broad: there is one jamb at the east end of the high altar left: hereabouts were buried king Edgar, and many of the Saxon kings, whose noble ashes ought to have protected the whole: two pillars of the great middle tower are left next the choir: on the north side is St. Mary’s chapel, as they told me; the roof beat down by violence, and a sorry wooden one in its place, thatched with stubble to make it serve as a stable: the manger lies upon the altar and niche where they put the holy water. St. Edgar’s chapel is opposite to it; not much left of it, beside the foundations: the north and south transepts are quite demolished. They say king Arthur was buried under the great tower. A small part of the south side wall of the body of the church remains, which made one side of the cloysters; and the arch at the west end, leading to the chapel of Joseph of Arimathea, the patron and asserted founder of the whole. This they say was the first christian church in Britain. The present work is about the third building upon the same spot:TAB. XXXV. it is forty-four paces long, thirty-six wide without: it is so intire, that we could well enough draw the whole structure, as in [plate 35]. the roof is chiefly wanting: two little turrets are at the corners of the west end, and two more at the interval of four windows from thence, which seem to indicate the space of ground the first chapel was built on: the rest between it and the church was a sort of anti-chapel. Underneath was a vault now full of water, the floor of the chapel being beaten down into it: it was wrought with great stones. Here was a capacious receptacle of the dead: they have taken up many leaden coffins, and melted them into cisterns. Hence is the subterraneous arched passage to the Torr, according to their notion. The roof of the chapel was finely arched with rib-work of stone: the sides of the walls are full of small pillars of Sussex marble, as likewise the whole church; which was a little way of ornamenting in those days: they are mostly beaten down: between them the walls are painted with pictures of saints, as still easily seen. All the walls are overgrown with ivy, which is the only thing here in a flourishing condition; everything else presenting a most melancholy, though venerable aspect. On the south side the cloysters was the great hall. The town’s people bought the stone ofTAB. XXXVII. the vaults underneath to build a sorry market-house, contributing to the ruin of the sacred fabric, and to their own: what they durst not have done singly, they perpetrated as a body, hoping vengeance would slip between so many: nor did they discern the benefit accruing to the town from the great concourse of strangers purposely to see this abbey, which is now the greatest trade of it, as formerly its only support; for it is in a most miserable decaying condition, as wholly cut off from the great revenues spent among them. There are many other foundations of the buildings left in the great area, but in the present hands will soon be rooted up, and the very footsteps of them effaced, which so many ages had been erecting. Though I am no encourager of superstitious foppery, yet I think, out of that vast estate, somewhat might have been left, if only to preserve old monuments for the benefit of our history. The abbot’s hall I have been told was curiously wainscoted with oak, and painted with coats of arms in every pannel. The mortar of these buildings is very good, and great rocks of the roof of the church lie upon the ground, consisting chiefly of rubble stone untouched by the fanatical destroyers, who work on the hewn stone of the outside, till a whole wall falls when undermined a little. Throughout the town are the tattered remains of doors, windows, bases, capitals of pillars, &c. brought from the abbey, and put into every poor cottage.
37
The Prospect of Glasenbury Abby.
Stukeley del.
A. St. Josephs chappel. B. The Abby Church. C. St. Marys chappel. D. Edgars chappel. E. The high Alter. F. The Cloysters. G. The Hall. H. The Abbots kitchin. I. The Abbots Lodging.