“The ancient priory of Tywardreth has long been so entirely levelled with the ground, that it is not very easy even to ascertain its site. Some time ago the present vicar obtained leave to dig the ground on its supposed site in search of stones for erecting a vicarage house. The place where he made an excavation for this purpose appears to have been the east end of the priory chapel; and as some measurements were taken at the time, and I have, with the permission of the landlord, opened the ground in several places, partly with the hope of ascertaining the form of the chapel, and partly of throwing some light on its architecture, the following particulars may not be unacceptable. “The chapel appears, so far as could be ascertained by measurement, to have been eighty feet long, by fifty-seven wide, with a semicircular end towards the east, strengthened by four buttresses of wrought Pentewan stone, two feet wide, and ornamented by four pilasters; within the shafts are a single half-column, fourteen inches in diameter. At each angle was a handsome piece of architecture, as it was described to me, of which pilasters, resembling those already described, formed a part, but with the base five inches wide, and the mouldings in proportion. “In the vicarage garden, adjoining the west end of the chapel, a fragment of a stone arch was found, with a fleur-de-lis elegantly carved in deep relief; the same devise appears on the church stile, and in a coat of arms in one of the windows of the church, and appears from Tanner to have been part of the arms of the priory. The wall of the chapel is the south wall of the churchyard. “The chapel was paved with beach pebbles, and was built partly of common clay slate raised on the spot; the wrought stones were of compact hard porphyry, from Pentewan Quarry in the parish of St. Austell, and hornblende from the cliff between Duporth and Charlestown in the same parish. All the carved work is executed with much skill and taste.” Several charters granted to this monastery are preserved in Dugdale’s Monasticon. The earliest is in the 19th year of Henry the Third, A. D. 1234, as follows: “Henricus Dei gratia Rex Angliæ, Dominus Hiberniæ Dux Normandiæ et Aquitaniæ, et Comes Andegaviæ, omnibus Archiepiscopis, &c. salutem. Inspeximus cartam Roberti de Cardinam, in hæc verba:―― “Robertus de Cardinam omnibus Sanctæ Matris Ecclesiæ filiis salutem. Sciatis me, pro Dei amore et animæ meæ salute, concessisse et præsenti carta mea confirmasse ecclesiæ sanctorum martyrum, Sergii et Bachi Andegavi, et ecclesiæ Sancti Andreæ de Tywordrait et Monachis ibidem Deo servientibus et servituris, omnes donationes et concessiones quas antecessores mei, seu quicunque fideles de feodo meo ipsis fecerint,” &c.