THE ENGLISH ABBEYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23807, 13 May 1939, Page 4

THE ENGLISH ABBEYS

MISS BRADLEY'S NEW VOLUME " The Story of the English Abbeys» Told In Counties." By Edith Bradley. Illustrated. London: Hale. 16s. Miss Bradley's work on the English abbeys promises to become of extreme interest to students of early ecclesiastical architecture, to archaeologists, and, indeed, to all lovers of the English countryside. In the first volume of the series, which was the subject of notice in these columns nine months ago, she dealt adequately with the abbeys of the northern counties. The second volume covers the eastern counties, the comparatively small but architecturally rich territory embracing Lincoln. Cambridge Norfolk. Suffolk. Essex, Kent and Sussex. This survey includes, among other notable abbeys and ruins, a consideration of the history of St. Edmunds, the greatest of all the religious houses in England, the Royal Abbey of Glastonbury alone excepted. The extraordinary devotion which Edmund, a young and apparently quite obscure King of East Anglia, drew to him after his death on the battlefield at the hands of the Danes, is attested in the existence of between 50 and 60 ancient churches dedicated to his name. Miss Bradley has sought tho reasons for his saintly popularity—if the term be admitted —and confesses that it must remain one of the "mysterious problems of history." She is able to show, however, that if Edmund in life made small recorded mark upon the annals of his time, frequent miracles were reported to have occurred in the little chapel at Hoxne, which was his first snrine. Strangely enough, King Cnut was the most enthusiastic of the early benefactors of the monastry of St. Edmund. The excavations at St. Augustine's, which have in recent years aroused such interest among pilgrims to Canterbury, are described by the author in another section of a work that is entirely comprehensive, and the product of an enormous amount of skilled research. It is very well illustrated. Our copy Is from Whitcombe and Tombs. J. M.