Above, approached by two stone staircases from within, and not, as in most cases, from without, was the principal dwelling-room, the solar, lighted on each side by three double lights, carved on their outer arches with zig-zag and billet mouldings, and on the south by a circular, and on the north by a fine double window, once richly ornamented, but now nearly destroyed. The fire-place, the only one in the house, is set nearly in the centre of the east wall; and above it still stands, in the place of the old smoke-vent, the beautiful round chimney, one of the earliest in England, like the fire-place, hid in ivy. There seems, however, as in the case of the still older Norman house at Southampton, to have been no wall-passage connecting the building, as we might have expected, with the castle; but like it, its entrances, of which there were three, one opening out upon the stream, were on the ground floor.[161] Coming down to later times, the great Lord Clarendon here possessed large property, and one of his favourite schemes was to make the Avon navigable to Salisbury. For this purpose it was surveyed by Yarranton, the hydrographer, who not only reported favourably of the idea, but proposed to make the harbour an anchorage for men-of-war, bringing forward the great natural advantages of Hengistbury Head, as also the facilities of procuring iron in the district, and wood from the New Forest.[162] All, however, fell to the ground with Clarendon’s exile, and the harbour is now silted up with sand and choked with weeds. Nothing else is there to be mentioned, except the visit by Edward VI. to the town, from whence he wrote a letter to his friend Barnaby Fitz-Patrick, far superior to most royal letters. The lazar-house, which stood in the Bargates, has long since been destroyed. The old market-place has been lately taken down; but in the main street, not far from the castle keep, remains, lately-restored, one of those timbered houses so common in the Midland counties and the Weald of Kent, with their dormer windows and richly-carved bressumers and barge-boards, but rarer in the West of England.[163] The glory, however, of the town, the Priory Church, still stands. Before describing it let us give some account of its history. Its earliest buildings were founded by some of the secular canons of the order of St. Augustine, probably on a spot used for worship by the Romans.[164] Mention of it is made in _Domesday_ as existing in Edward the Confessor’s reign, and as possessing five hydes and one yardland in Thuinam, as also its tithes, and the third of those of Holdenhurst.[165] The present building, however, dates only from the time of Flambard, who rebuilt the church, pulling down the earlier building with its nine cells.[166] And in Henry I.’s reign, Baldwin de Redvers brought in the regular instead of the secular canons, and placed them under the first prior, Reginald.