_Hill Farrance_, 3-1/2 m. N.E. of Wellington, is a village on the Tone.
Its church (ded. to the Holy Cross) has a massive-looking tower, with
an open-work parapet, bearing the initials I.P. It contains sedilia and
a piscina, and some carved bench ends. On the S. of the building is a
mortuary chapel (14th cent.) of one of the De Vernais (once lords of
the manor), which at the restoration of the church in 1857 was given to
the parish.
_Hinton Blewitt_, a small and secluded village, 4 m. S.W. from Clutton.
The church is Perp., with a fair W. tower. It possesses a stoup and a
rather poor piscina. The village, which is on the slope of a hill,
commands a pleasant view of the Mendips.
_Hinton Charterhouse_, a small village 6 m. S. of Bath, on the more
easterly of the alternative roads from the city to Frome. Its sole
attraction consists in a few fragments of a once considerable
Carthusian priory. About 1/2 m. N. of the village, in the corner of a
field near the main road, is what looks like a low gabled church tower,
with a small E.E. chancel and some other out-buildings. These remnants
are all that survive of a house founded here in 1232 by the widow of
William Longsword, for the accommodation of a settlement of
Carthusians; and it is worth noticing that of the Carthusian houses in
England, which never numbered more than nine, Somerset had two. The
ruins, which are very meagre, consist of two groups of buildings. (1)
One is a three-storeyed structure, containing on basement a vaulted,
chapel-like chamber, lighted by side lancets and a terminal triplet,
and possessing a large piscina and an aumbry. This is generally but
quite erroneously described as the "chapter-house." It may have been
the fratry. On the first floor is another vaulted chamber, supposed to
have been the library. It communicated at the end with a pigeon-cote,
and is reached by a good stone staircase, which also gives access to a
loft above. On the L. of the passage leading to the library will also
be noticed a small room lighted by a square-headed window. (2) The
second, in the stable-yard of the adjoining manor house, is the
refectory, a good, vaulted apartment, with a row of octagonal columns
down the centre. At the W. end it opens into the kitchen, in which will
be discovered a fireplace. Of the priory church, which abutted on the
N. wall of the so-called "chapter house," nothing is left but a single
trefoiled piscina and one of the vaulting shafts. The buildings have
evidently been freely used as a quarry for the erection of the
neighbouring manor house. In a dingle in the adjoining field is a
stone-faced, pointed archway, tunnelling the road. The parish church is
an unattractive, ivy-clad building near the village. _Hinton House_
(J.C. Foxcroft) is a modern mansion, with a fine open green in front of
it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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