Page:St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester (1917).djvu/21

Rh up to the time of its destruction suggests that it was well preserved and Grose says that it was "entire" until the siege. After 1648 it was left in ruins, totally uncared for. In a description published in the "Universal Magazine" for December 1786 (p. 281) the church is said to have suffered repeated depredations from time to time, and to have been much defaced. "At length however the parish officers to prevent its total demolition, took the laudable resolution of enclosing and locking it up. This has permitted the weeds and shrubs to sprout up among the mouldering walls and scattered tombs; a circumstance which adds greatly to the beauty and solemnity of the scene."

The north-west tower, of which only the base now exists, was standing, according to Morant, within the memory of man, that is to say, about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The engraving in his "History of Essex" (published 1768) shows the north wall of this tower standing to a height of some fifteen feet, with a small semicircular headed window in it.

The nave was used for burials in the eighteenth and great part of the nineteenth centuries, and the ground level gradually rose until it reached some three feet above the nave floor. On the south side of the church the site of the cloister was also levelled up to about the same extent and laid out as a garden between the new parish church and the priory church, the cloister walks being buried about four feet deep. Various small repairs were carried out from time to time, but not enough to keep pace with the gradual decay of the masonry from exposure and growth of ivy and other plants, and eventually in 1912 a trust was formed by the parochial authorities for the purpose of placing the ruins of the priory under the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works. Between 1912 and 1915 the whole building was made weather-proof and its walls strengthened by grouting, the ivy and overgrowth taken away, and the ground levelled down where this was possible.

The plan of the original church must for the present, except in regard to the nave, be a matter of conjecture. It may be supposed to have been begun about the end of the eleventh century, and as St. Botolph's was not a rich foundation was probably carried on slowly. No date of consecration, marking the completion of the church, is recorded, but the detail of the west front shows that the twelfth century was far advanced before the building was finished. The seven western bays of the nave remain, and the wall of the north aisle of an eighth bay; and there may have been another bay to the east. The present internal length is 108 ft., so that the total length may