These two well-meaning but ignorant men decided that a
brand-new church would be a great improvement on this old tumble-down
building. An architect was called in, or a local builder; the plan of
a new church was speedily drawn, and ere long the hammers and axes
were let loose on the old church and every vestige of antiquity
destroyed. The old Norman font was turned out of the church, and
either used as a cattle-trough or to hold a flower-pot in the rectory
garden. Some of the beautifully carved stones made an excellent
rockery in the squire's garden, and old woodwork, perchance a
fourteenth-century rood-screen, encaustic tiles bearing the arms of
the abbey with which in former days the church was connected,
monuments and stained glass, are all carted away and destroyed, and
the triumph of vandalism is complete.
That is an oft-told tale which finds its counterpart in many towns and
villages, the entire and absolute destruction of the old church by
ignorant vandals who work endless mischief and know not what they do.
There is the village of Little Wittenham, in our county of Berks, not
far from Sinodun Hill, an ancient earthwork covered with trees, that
forms so conspicuous an object to the travellers by the Great Western
Railway from Didcot to Oxford. About forty years ago terrible things
were done in the church of that village.
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