From this one passes across the grass to the old Refectory,
now fitted up as the parish church, a noble work of the Early English
style of the thirteenth century, as is the fine pulpit with its arcade
in the thickness of the wall. Here of old the monk read aloud while his
brethren took their meagre repast.
From the Refectory one comes into the ruined cloisters, lovely with all
manner of flowers, and so to the site of the old Chapter House, of the
sacristy and the monastic buildings. All that remains is in the early
Decorated style of the end of the thirteenth century. Here, too, upon
the north stood the great abbey church, three hundred and thirty-five
feet long, a cruciform building consisting of nave with two aisles,
central tower, transepts with aisles, chancel with circular apse and
chapels, now marked out in chalk upon the grass. All about are the
woods, meadows, fishponds and greens of the monks who are gone.
I do not know how this strikes another who shall see it to-day, in all
its useless beauty, in the midst of our restless and unhappy England;
but what I felt has already been expressed and by so good an Englishman
as William Cobbett.
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