thing of history and its own antiquity. Let each man take that which comes to his hand, and he will soon find how far reaching is the study of antiquities in his own person.

I may perhaps introduce some of my personal experiences. Circumstances in my youth took me to the Levant, and my first lessons in antiquarian studies were there. These were my first and consequently my most agreeable studies, and whenever I can, I revert to them. When I came to my own business it was not unnatural that the antiquities of my own profession should occupy some part of my thoughts. The subject is not an inviting one, but, nevertheless, it has a very curious interest of its own.

In time I became a churchwarden of a city parish. I had no fancy for this post, and parochial matters were distasteful to me, but it fell out in the way of business, and those who know my life for the last twenty years know how completely I have thrown in my lot with my enforced position, and how much instruction, pleasure, and satisfaction I have derived from it. As I walk through the parish in which my place of business is, I know every inhabitant in it from the middle of the sixteenth century and where he lived and what he did.

In the course of events I became a member of, and ultimately master of, the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London. This Company is the College of Notaries of London, and as you may imagine, when I was able to do so, I examined their records and found among them a complete list of the city notaries and of their notarial marks from the reign of King Edward II. to the present time, and a very interesting record it is.

But whenever leisure comes to me I go back to my first love. I never could have believed that I could have interested myself in parochial and municipal records; but they came to my hand, and they have interested and engrossed my attention more than I could have expected or believed.

I would therefore urge upon all my friends here, and particularly those who are commencing the study of antiquities, to take up that subject which comes across them in their daily path, and I would like to wind this address. up with another personal experience. I live in Surrey, at

the top of the North Downs. One day while I was churning this address in my mind I went for a walk over Walton Heath. Any Surrey person knows this as the finest heath in Mid-Surrey. In the middle of the heath is a Roman summer camp, with the colonel's house adjoining it. Somehow my steps naturally took me there. It was an out-of-the-way part of the heath, and I had something of a scramble to find my way home.

As I walked across the heath I thought of how there are antiquities worthy of study in every man's path if he would only look for them, and I determined in my address to impress it on you here to-day. Almost as it were in fulfilment of my own idea, in the middle of the heath I came suddenly upon the traces of an ancient Roman way which I knew must be there, which I had long looked for and always missed; and as I looked along it, and traced the faint remains of it covered with heather, the thought came doubly strong upon me-there are abundant opportunities for the study of antiquities in the path of everyday life which is before you if you will only keep your eyes open and avail yourself of them.

I have only one more word. I have made this address personal to give encouragement to others who, like myself, have very few, if any, really leisure hours. If I with so little leisure have found so much instruction and real pleasure from the study, what may not others of you get from it who have more time at your disposal than I have?

20

VOL. XLVII.

TEWKESBURY ABBEY CHURCH.1

By ALBERT HARTSHORNE, F.S.A.

Within a circle of about twenty-five miles in diameter we have in this well favoured district six religious foundations of great size and importance:-Worcester, Gloucester, Pershore, Evesham, Malvern and Tewkesbury.2 We have now arrived at the one which, in some respects, surpasses all of them, Not, indeed, in size, but in the exceeding solemnity of the interior, the majesty of the vaults, the richness of the tombs, the brilliancy of the glass, and the very striking Norman arrangement of the plan.

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At Tewkesbury we have a plan which, in the main, retains the general features of a great Romanesque church, for we have the Norman nave, aisles, and transepts, in their original inception; and, inasmuch as the piers of the choir are also Norman, it is obvious that it was, as at present, surrounded by an aisle; consequently the only difference between the plan of the Romanesque church in its intirety, and the plan as we now see it, is such as has arisen from alterations in the size of the choir aisles, or ambulatory, and the addition of the chapels forming the chevet. The Lady chapel has been removed, but the general arrangement may be compared with the much larger church of Westminster where we have this peculiarly French plan. We are not called upon here to show how a large monastic church grew from a small one, but we shall eventually see, as we run through its history, how a large church grew into a larger.

Read at Tewkesbury, August 13th, 1890.

2 See The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury, by J. L. Petit, 1848.

Now, first as to documentary evidence; this is very limited, but we have two records :-The Annals of Tewkesbury, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, purports to give an account for each year of affairs connected with, or affecting the monastery. It begins with the Conquest (1066), and breaks off in 1263.

But unfortunately, in its whole course, little light is thrown upon the church and monastery. The other record is the Tewkesbury Register which appears to be a copy of an earlier one, and written about 1545. This has value, and contains a summary of the foundation, as well as biographical notices of the Earls of Gloucester, and patrons of the abbey.

As to the architectural history of the church it is said that "Dudda" first founded a monastery here in 715, in conjunction with Odda. It is difficult to get at the exact truth, but Odda died in 1056, and both the Annals and the Register have mixed up, apparently, two periods and two persons. However, it is not of much importance now because there is nothing visible at Tewkesbury as early as 1056, and we are specially concerned only with what we

can see.

From Mr. Blunt's excellent work on Tewkesbury Abbey we gather that the first church must have been of very, slight importance, and by the latter part of the tenth centuay it had become a cell to the monastery of Cranbourn in Dorsetshire. In 1083, when Cranbourn passed into the King's hands, Abbot Gerald set about a re-construction of the Tewkesbury establishment.

Three years later, in 1087, Rufus granted the Honour of Gloucester, which included the Lordship of Tewkesbury, and the patronage of the monastery, to Fitz Hamon. There can be no doubt that now began the great work, and that the foundations of a church of the usual Norman type were laid, or decided upon. This plan consisted of a nave, aisles, central tower, transepts with semicircular apses, and an apsidal choir, not round, as at Peterborough, but polygonal, a form necessitated by the width of the pier arches, and in order to avoid that very unpleasing feature, the double curvature of the lines of the arch. All this we can see at the present day, and no doubt the Romanesque plan, with its characteristic long nave, was

completed by a north transept apse, and choir aisles or ambulatory running with the lines of the choir, and from which,perhaps,branched out other semicircular apses, which are now represented, to a certain extent, by the present chapels at the east end. It was a great undertaking which must have progressed slowly. The beginning of it is put down at 1102, by the Annals, and this date is important and seems to agree with the character of the work, which is very plain throughout.

Fitz Hamon was slain at Falaise in 1107 and could therefore hardly have seen the completion of any part of his great church. His remains were temporarily laid in the Chapter House, probably of the old monastic buildings.

Robert Consul, Earl of Gloucester, a great man, and a great builder, who set his mark upon the Walls of Cardiff Castle, and who had married Mabel eldest daughter of Fitz Hamon, carried on the work, and in 1123, according to the Annals, the church was consecrated, It is improbable-impossible-that the whole church from the east end to the west front was finished at this early date, indeed, there are indications at the west end of a change in the plan at that part. It would be the choir, the ecclesia proper, that was consecrated in 1123; but the plainness of the Norman work throughout is noticeable, as is also the great height of the naves piers, as well as the remarkable smallness of the triforium, usually a considerable feature of a Norman church. The triforiums of Ely and Waltham are notable examples which occur to the mind. The great plainness of large Romanesque churches seems to imply, as Mr. Petit has pointed out, that simplicity and grandeur of design in abbey or cathedral superseded elaborate workmanship such as one finds in the parish church. Here, as at Ely, the same plainness of Norman was adhered to as the work progressed towards the west end.

The current of these observations has brought us to that very remarkable composition, the west front. With its unique arch it is still but a portion of a larger design the full consideration of which might induce a careful scrutiny of the composition of a great Romanesque church, not only in England and Normandy but