About two miles away from Perivale, in the same valley, is the scarcely less interesting Greenford Magna, also named after a ford on the Brent. Given by King Ethelred to the monks of the ancient monastery that preceded Edward the Confessor's foundation at Westminster, the manor of Greenford Magna remained the property of the latter until the dissolution of the monasteries, when it was confiscated by Henry VIII., by whom it was given somewhat later to the see of London, to which it still belongs. Its fourteenth-century church, dedicated to the Holy Cross, occupies the site of a Saxon chapel, and greatly resembles that of Perivale in style. It was well restored in 1871, when some of the fifteenth-century glass was successfully incorporated in the new windows, and it contains several well-preserved sixteenth and seventeenth century brasses. {279} [Sidenote: West Twyford] Rivalling the two Greenfords in the romantic beauty of its situation is the little hamlet of West Twyford (so called to distinguish it from the comparatively commonplace village of East Twyford in the neighbouring parish of Willesden), situated partly on the Brent and partly on the Paddington Canal, at a spot where the river makes a very sudden bend. As its name implies, there were in ancient times two fords across the Brent that, according to tradition, were much used by the monks of the monastery that occupied the site of the mansion now known as Twyford Abbey, though there is absolutely no historic proof that any religious house ever existed there. A moated manor-house there certainly was, however, which was pulled down early in the nineteenth century, and there seems little doubt that on the site of the barn-like church of uncertain date was a much earlier chapel--possibly Norman--the property having been held in the eleventh century by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, who may have owned a clergy-house for the officiating priests. Strange to say, the little sanctuary, now included in the see of London, after changing hands with the manor to which it was attached again and again, long occupied the position of belonging to no parish. It was apparently overlooked when the new ecclesiastical survey was made, and until quite recently it had no incumbent, the owner of Twyford Abbey paying for the services held in it, and when he let his house stipulating that his tenant should provide a clergyman for six Sundays in the year. {280} [Sidenote: Sion House]