The vicar was a Goth. There
was a very beautiful chantry chapel on the south side of the choir,
full of magnificent marble monuments to the memory of various members
of the Dunce family. This family, once great and powerful, whose great
house stood hard by on the north of the church--only the terraces of
which remain--is now, it is believed, extinct. The vicar thought that
he might be held responsible for the dilapidations of this old
chantry; so he pulled it down, and broke all the marble tombs with
axes and hammers. You can see the shattered remains that still show
signs of beauty in one of the adjoining barns. Some few were set up in
the tower, the old font became a pig-trough, the body of the church
was entirely renewed, and vandalism reigned supreme. In our county of
Berks there were at the beginning of the last century 170 ancient
parish churches. Of these, thirty have been pulled down and entirely
rebuilt, six of them on entirely new sites; one has been burnt down,
one disused; before 1890 one hundred were restored, some of them most
drastically, and several others have been restored since, but with
greater respect to old work.
A favourite method of "restoration" was adopted in many instances. A
church had a Norman doorway and pillars in the nave; sundry additions
and alterations had been made in subsequent periods, and examples of
Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles of architecture
were observable, with, perhaps, a Renaissance porch or other later
feature.
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