[Evesham by Edmund H. New]@TWC D-Link bookEvesham CHAPTER IV 12/13
The passage is continued from this corner to the outer wall of the building where it abruptly terminates in a screen of modern construction.
If we go farther round this block into the garden we shall come to another cottage, and in the front room we may see a well-carved fireplace ornamented with five quatrefoils.
It is composed of the oolite stone used for all the finer and more important work in the Monastery, but has been lately painted, with unfortunate result.
Beyond a partition is a beautifully carved fragment which would seem to have formed part of an elaborate shrine or chantry, but now serves as the lintel of the scullery window. Overlooking the garden in which we stand as we leave the door is the gable end of a plain rectangular building, now cottages, but formerly the Abbot's stables. One more relic completes the list of the remains of the "late Abbey," as Leland pathetically alludes to that important establishment. Walking across the Green we see before us an old stone porch embattled above, and behind it a plain building of two storeys.
This was the Grammar School of Abbot Lichfield, and his inscription over the door may still be deciphered, "ORATE PRO ANIMA CLEMENTIS ABBAT." The schoolhouse is of timber, and has been little altered, except that the front is spoiled by the substitution of brick for wood and plaster; the ornamental battlement on the porch is also of recent date. For more than a hundred years after the destruction of the noble pile the site was used as a stone quarry, and fragments may be found in almost all the older houses in the town, and in many farm buildings in the neighbourhood.
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