The Mitred Benedictine Abbey of S. Aldhelm, Malmesbury
by MacKenzie Edward Charles Walcott (9780217599788)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MALMESBURY. THE town of Malmesbury, one of the most picturesque in England, stands upon a hill, rising out or lowlands watered by little streams and runnels; formerly it had fortifications, the memory of which remains in the name of King's Wall on the south; four gates (a fragment still survives in Holloway, on the Cirencester road); and, until the reign of King John, a castle also, where Abbey Row now stands. The suburb of Westport marks the sight of the western entrance. Down the steep street, near the " King's Arms " Hotel, rode the last of the abbots on his way to the only home left him, among the noisy Bristol streets; and along Oxford street, the black-frocked Benedictine students took their way, to study in their modest priory at Oxford. There are several old houses, a beautiful, although mouldering octagonalmarket-cross of the close of the loth century, which in Leland's time was " a right fair and costly piece of work"; and the Early English archway of the Chapel of the Lazar Hospital of St. John still stands at the southern entrance of the town, on the site once occupied by a convent of nuns, which was built by famous Abbot Dinoth of Bangor. The gallantry and good service of the men of Malmesbury, in the great victory at Sodbury Hill, over their old enemies the Danes, who had burned their houses, procured the favour of King Athelstan,f and the town received a royal charter. In later times the martial Bishop Roger, of Salisbury, fortified the castle in 1139, and in 1152 Prince Henry of Anjou worsted King Stephen beneath its walls. In 1643 King Charles I. lodged in the " Banquetting House" in Holloway, on his road to Cirencester. As Tewkesbury and Bury St. Edmund's are named after a local worthy, or saint, so Maeldulph's Bury grew up round a hermit's cell; and, as...

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