The local tradition of the splendour of the Monastery is no doubt
handed down to us by Thomas Habington, the antiquary, who visited the
town in 1640. "There was not to be found," he writes, with pardonable
exaggeration, "out of Oxford or Cambridge, so great an assemblage of
religious buildings in the kingdom"!




CHAPTER V

THE PARISH CHURCHES


The two parish churches, placed together in one yard, make with the
bell tower an unusually striking group. What then would be the
feelings aroused in the spectator were the great church, a cathedral
in magnitude and splendour, still visible, rising majestically above
roofs and spires. To us the Abbey which is gone can do no more than
add solemnity to the scene which once it graced. It matters little by
which entrance we approach the churchyard, for from every side the
buildings group harmoniously; each of the steeples acting as it were
as a foil to the other: and both the spires unite in adding dignity to
the bell tower. The churchyard in Norman times would seem to have been
part of the Abbey precincts, as it is enclosed within Abbot Reginald's
wall already described, and a second wall, part of which is still
standing, divided it from the Monastery and the monastic grounds.

The Church of All Saints seems to have served, from very early times,
as the parish church. As we examine it we read, as in an ancient and