WOOD SPRING PRIORY.
The History of Woodspring Priory. By W. G. Willis Watson. (Lawrence Brothers, Weston-super-Mare. is. net.)—Few people know the beautiful and romantic ruin of Woodspring Priory on tho Somersetshire coast. Fortunately it lies off the high roads and main thoroughfares, and thus its lonely beauty has been preserved. Between Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon the coast is bordered by low grassy hills turning rocky faces towards the sea ; behind one of these rolling downs lies the Priory which William de Courtenay founded in 1210. The existing buildings are of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and though small of scale are beautiful in design. The choir has perished utterly, and so have the transepts, but the central tower and the walls of the nave remain intact. Into these walls a seventeenth- century farmhouse has boon built, and though the outline of the perpendicular east window is still to be seen, inside it are the square mullions of a later and domestic style. Inside the house in odd places pieces of the old church break out through the planter of prosaic bedrooms. Through a whitewashed wall we find- projecting carved work, proclaiming that English builders once were artists. Then there is the tithe-barn, itself alone worth going a journey to see, with its magnificent size.and church-like proportions. All these things are described in the excellent little guide before us, which also tells us all that is known of the history of the Priory from early times till its dissolution, when the Prior received a pension of .812 a year.
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