Many of them have been used as quarries, and only a few stones remain
to mark the spot where once stood a holy house of God. Before the
Reformation the land must have teemed with churches. I know not the
exact number of monastic houses once existing in England. There must
have been at least a thousand, and each had its church. Each parish
had a church. Besides these were the cathedrals, chantry chapels,
chapels attached to the mansions, castles, and manor-houses of the
lords and squires, to almshouses and hospitals, pilgrim churches by
the roadside, where bands of pilgrims would halt and pay their
devotions ere they passed along to the shrine of St. Thomas at
Canterbury or to Our Lady at Walsingham. When chantries and guilds as
well as monasteries were suppressed, their chapels were no longer used
for divine service; some of the monastic churches became cathedrals or
parish churches, but most of them were pillaged, desecrated, and
destroyed. When pilgrimages were declared to be "fond things vainly
invented," and the pilgrim bands ceased to travel along the pilgrim
way, the wayside chapel fell into decay, or was turned into a barn or
stable.
It is all very sad and deplorable. But the roll of abandoned shrines
is not complete. At the present day many old churches are vanishing.
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