Page:Notes on the churches in the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.djvu/352

290 of William and Gundrada, which are therefore supposed to have contained respectively the bones of the two founders of the priory; but demonstrating, that, if such was the fact, the deposition of the remains of the earl and countess in those cists must have been a re-interment, at a considerable interval after the first. From measurement of the several thigh-bones it appears, that, according to the usual proportions, both De Warenne and his wife must have exceeded the average height; which must likewise have been the case with regard to at least two other male persons, whose bones were exhumed in the priory, and one of them was even taller than Will, de Warenne. It is remarkable, that in several skulls, thus brought to light, the teeth, including the double ones, were very greatly worn down, although they appeared to have continued perfectly sound. In Southover church is the monumental slab to the memory of Gundred, which was discovered about 1775 in the church of Isfield, forming part of a monument to a Shurley; therefore probably taken possession of and so employed (for which purpose it was shortened at one end) on the demolition of the priory church, where, we may reasonably conjecture, it might be the upper part of the tomb over Gundred's relics in the cist. A small adjunct to the eastern part of the south wall of the church has been erected to contain the above-mentioned remains. The interior is richly adorned with (beside other ornamental work) carving in various patterns copied from fragments discovered in and near the site of the priory; which fragments deserve notice and preservation, the character of the mouldings being good, and not common. Southover church has recently been vastly improved by purification from sundry barbarisms.—"The marble cluster columns, and part of the arches of the portals of the priory were standing but a few years since, and extended at right angles from the wall of the churchyard to the main road; but the greater part has been pulled down, and all that remain are one of the posterns, and the doorway of the porter's lodge, which has been re-erected near the spot, and now forms the entrance of a passage leading to the adjacent meadows." (Mantell's Ramble, 31.) The same little work (142, 143) gives representations of the four sides of a Norm. capital, discovered several years ago among the ruins of the priory; this capital appears to be early.

In the village street, a little to the west of the church, stands an ancient house, which is traditionally said to have been the