We went through this
gateway, and found ourselves in an enclosure of venerable walls, open to
the sky, with old Norman arches standing about, beneath the loftiest of
which the sexton told us the high altar used to stand. Of course, there
were weeds and ivy growing in the crevices, but not so abundantly as I
have seen them elsewhere. The sexton pointed out a piece of a statue
that had once stood in one of the niches, and which he himself, I think,
had dug up from several feet below the earth; also, in a niche of the
walls, high above our heads, he showed us an ancient wooden coffin, hewn
out of a solid log of oak, the hollow being made rudely in the shape of a
human figure. This too had been dug up, and nobody knew how old it was.
While we looked at all this solemn old trumpery, the curate, quite a
young man, stood at the back door of his house, elevated considerably
above the ruins, with his young wife (I presume) and a friend or two,
chatting cheerfully among themselves. It was pleasant to see them there.
After examining the ruins, we went inside of the church, and found it a
dim and dusky old place, quite paved over with tombstones, not an inch of
space being left in the aisles or near the altar, or in any nook or
corner, uncovered by a tombstone. There were also mural monuments and
escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the mutilated statue of a
Crusader, with his legs crossed, in the style which one has so often read
about.
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