time, dismissed from a scene in which they once moved, as influential facts and exponents; there we sowed again the tares, that shall remain ungathered from the wheat until the morning of universal doom.

By the excavation of the nave little information was obtained. In the urgent necessity to obtain space for the chantry chapels, it had been so divided and traversed by massy wooden screens, as to render the introduction of the larger windows on the south, and that noble one at the west end, a matter of necessity rather than of taste. Besides the chapels thus formed in the side aisles, the main body of the nave was crossed by not less than four screens, thus affording space for at least eight altars. During the time when this eastern portion of it was cleared out, nothing was observed on the surface, except a few stones that had formed the base of a screen that had been fixed in front of the last bay of the nave. Some little time, however, afterwards, when the iron tramway that had been used in the excavation was being removed, the wheel of a cart that was passing over this part suddenly sunk a foot or more deep in the earth, and on being raised, it was found that the slip had been occasioned by the fracture of a large earthenware vase that was buried immediately below the surface. As it had evidently been placed there at a remote period, the soil around was particularly examined, when it was discovered that, on the east side of the screen, and divided by the processional pathway, were two spaces of the form of the Roman letter L walled on the sides and flagged at the bottom. In that on the south side nothing was observed; but in the other, a large quantity of charcoal ashes; and to the astonishment of all who have seen them, nine vases or jugs of rude earthenware, each sufficiently capacious to have contained nearly two fluid gallons, fixed on their sides within the walls of the space, and also partially filled with charcoal. These ashes may have been cast here from the adjacent furnace, where the lead stripped from the house had been evidently melted into a marketable shape at the time of the dissolution; but why the vases should have been introduced is, so far as I can understand, on precedent, a case unique and unaccountable. Speculation on an object that is hourly visited has, I doubt, hitherto proved more amusing than instructive, and I must confess that, after a most minute examination of this and many other monastic and ecclesiastical structures, I can only occupy your time with equally baseless conjectures.

Besides these vases, and the bases of three altars attached to

the pillars, no particular objects of interest were observed in the nave, except that towards the west end two blocks of limestone, each two feet three inches square, with a circle incised on the surface, were found inserted in the floor, which led to a more particular examination, ending in the discovery of fifty of similar character, occupying the space and arranged in the form expressed on the plan just published in the last edition of my "Guide." They marked the positions observed by members of the convent, before they moved in procession on high days to meet their patrons or benefactors. On the store immediately in front of the great west door, which is larger than the rest, stood the mitred abbot, clad in his lustrous cope of cloth of gold, and with his magnificent crosier in his hand. Before him, on each side, with the space of about three feet between, were ranged twenty-five of his brethren, each, too, habited in some of the copes, and bearing some of the relics, or shrines, or crosses, or images I have mentioned; and, immediately in front, preceding all, was placed the cross-bearer, who led the long-drawn procession into the choir. The faces of the stones were, however, so crumbled and decayed, with the exception of the two which occasioned the discovery of the rest, that the turf has been continued over them, so that, to an uninformed observer, there remains little trace of an interesting arrangement of which something similar was to be seen on the ancient pavement at York Minster before it was destroyed in the last century.

At the east end of the south aisle, and on the left hand of one passing from the church to the cloister court, was found, fixed to the foundation of a screen that had divided this part from the transept, the moulded base of a stoup or holy water basin of very good work of the thirteenth century, which will be rendered of particular interest, if it can be proved as I think it may-to have supported the very beautifully carved marble basin now used as a font in the adjacent chapel of Aldfield, which is distinctly remembered to have been brought from Fountains.

Nothing more, I think, now remains to be told of the excavation of the church, except that the great staircase leading from the south-west end of the nave to the dormitory has also been opened and cleared out. The side walls were found to have been broken down, and the steps all but entirely torn away; yet it is not uninteresting to gaze musingly on the path by which so many generations of holy men crept, in the breathless solitude of midnight, from their cheerless cells, with aching hearts and shivering limbs; while the assurances of that faith, whose rites they were

about to administer, mingled with the relentless peal of the warning bell, and associated the white habits in which they were arrayed with those spotless robes in which, having passed through this "great tribulation," they should at last be invested, and sing the songs of never-failing praise in the eternal temple of heaven.

After the excavation of the church was completed, the rubbish that had accumulated at the west end of the nave was removed. In laying down previously the railroad which traversed this space, when the works within the building were in progress, some traces of a foundation wall were observed parallel with, and at a distance of fifteen feet from, the great entrance; but as they were thought only to have supported a wooden porch, little further notice was taken of them at the time. When this space, however, has now become entirely cleared, it appears that towards the close of the twelfth century a vestibule or Galilee, co-extensive with the front of the nave, has been added to it, and also somewhat altered in the succeeding century. In its elevation it has not apparently risen above the base of the present western window, and from an examination of the stones found in the rubbish, has had an open arcade, supported on double shafts, on each side of the doorway; but the north and south ends have been only of plain masonry. It seems, like similar porches elsewhere, to have Leen chosen as a place of burial, since there were found within it six graves, covered with large slabs. Of the four to be seen at the south end, nothing is to be particularly observed, except the mode in which the graves are connected; but in the opposite extremity is a remarkably fine and perfect slab-still fixed by massy leaden clamps to the coffin-which bears the device of a processional cross of the early part of the thirteenth century.

There was found, also, within this unexpected appendage to the church, a large image of the Blessed Virgin,

"With her Almighty infant in her arms,"

that had been thrown down from the niche that it occupied above the great western window, bearing the date of 1494. Both figures are headless, and there is little in the composition to attract admiration; yet these might be, even now, not inaptly restored to a position, whence, for three centuries, they have been, ignominiously deposed, that emblem of the great patroness of the house, to which generations of faith have directed their eyes with feelings of piety or veneration.

(1) Apocal., ch. vii., v. 13. Part of the preceding verse still remains inscribed on the Tower of Fountains.

Several well-sculptured architectural fragments, which may hereafter, when better examined, prove useful in investigating the history of the building, were also found here; but it would be uninteresting now to allude to them; though I must mention, that in their company were discovered two of those small perforated plates of lead-exceeding in elegance of design and intricacy of pattern those discovered at Sawley Abbey-which, no doubt, were inserted in windows for the purpose of ventilation.

The removal of the deep rubbish that has accumulated on the north side of the nave is now in progress, and will occupy the rest of the present season. No discoveries of foundations or of curiosities can reasonably be anticipated; but, from the increase of elevation which the long-buried part of the structure will receive, and the more picturesque points of view in which it will become generally accessible, if the pathway is directed nearer the rocks, a very gratifying result will assuredly be obtained.

And now, having exhausted every topic on which I have endeavoured to instruct or to amuse, it is a pleasing mitigation to the regret with which I quit my occupation, that I am enabled to gratify you with the intelligence, that the Earl de Grey has recently directed that all such statues, sculptures, mouldings, brackets, capitals, or other ornamental portions of the building as are suffering decay, shall be carefully cast in plaster; and that a copy of each, when the original ought not to be removed, shall be kept, together with all the curiosities that have been found during the excavation, in the court room, which is to be fitted up for their reception. Many objects that are easy of access have been cast already; and during the present week, a scaffold has been erected before the tower, so that authentic copies may be taken of the statues that decorate the niches on its sides. I had hoped that I might have exhibited to you, to-day, some sketches of these objects, but I find that a little time must elapse before this can be accomplished; and, therefore, however imperfectly the pencil may illustrate the observations which you have heard, I will substitute these representations of the changed aspect of the church that have become unattainable, since the avaricious miscreants who perpetrated its ruin abandoned to the hands of avarice and the tooth of time

"Things that were holy, and are holy still."

NOTE. The vases, to which Mr. Walbran alludes on p. 155, were for acoustic purposes, as he himself subsequently discovered.

VIII. ON THE

RECENT EXCAVATIONS AT SAWLEY ABBEY, IN YORKSHIRE. Read at the Joint Meeting of the Architectural Societies of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, held at Thornton College, Sept. 15th, 1852. By JOHN RICHARD WALBRAN.

The ruins of the Cistercian abbey of Sawley are situated in the vale of the Ribble, immediately above that point of the river where it becomes the boundary between the counties of York and Lancaster.

According to a memorandum in the chartulary of the house, now preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, this abbey was founded, in the year 1147, by William de Percy, Baron of Topcliffe and Spofford; the establishment of an abbot, twelve monks and ten lay brethren having been provided from Newminster in Northumberland, the eldest daughter of the great monastery of Fountains.

About forty years, however, after the period of the foundation, the institution was in danger of being dissolved. The monks complained that, through the humidity of the climate, their corn rotted on the ground; that they were in want both of food and clothing; and, so far as we may infer from the contemporary record of their position, that the fabric itself was in danger of ruin.

The founder was now dead, and his estates vested in his eldest daughter and heiress, Maud Countess of Warwick. She was a pious and benevolent woman, and on learning the destitute condition of the house, and the determination of the abbot of Clarevall and the visitors of the order that, in default of the interference of the patroness, the abbey must be destroyed, she obviated the scandal that awaited her father's inoperative foundation, by the donation of the church of Tadcaster and about an hundred acres of land in Catton, where she was born.

The sub-infeudatories of the Percys were inclined, from time to time, to contribute their acres and oxgangs to the foundation of their lord: but the attraction of the Lacys and their dependants to Whalley and Kirkstall, and of the Romilles and Albernarles to the priory of Bolton, prevented the accession of any considerable territory, or the diversion of the bounty of the neighbouring families in this direction.

When the coffers of the religious houses had become swelled to repletion, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, we find the convent of Sawley still poor and dissatisfied. They complained that the surrounding country was very mountainous and