The following Publications have been received during the year 1855, in exchange for the Proceedings of the Society :

Journals of the British Archæological Association, January, March, June, September, and December, 1855.

Journals of the Kilkenny and South-east of Ireland Archæological Society, vol. 2, parts 1 and 2 ; vol. 3, part 2, and for January, March, May, July, September, and November, 1855.

History of Kent, by Mr. Dunkin.

Transactions of the Leicester Literary Philosophical Society, for 1855.

Reports, etc., of the Northampton Architectural Society, for 1854.

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

SOMERSETSHIRE ARCHEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY,

1855, PART II.

PAPERS, ETC.

Dunster Priory Church.

BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A.

AM

MONG the various papers which I have now, for some years past, annually communicated to the Somersetshire Archæological Society, there has not yet been any which has at all closely approached to the nature of a monograph. I have generally dealt rather with groups of churches, and with the characteristics of whole districts, than with detailed examinations of individual buildings. But the place of your present meeting seems to suggest a different course on the present occasion. The Priory Church of Dunster, though, as a work of architecture, immeasurably inferior to the glorious structures on which I have commented upon in other parts of the county, has nevertheless, for the ecclesiastical antiquary, an interest of a peculiar kind, and for myself more particularly so, as its more remarkable features throw VOL. VI., 1855, PART II.

great light on an important question to which I have for a long while devoted special attention.

The subject to which I allude is that of the architectural distinction between merely parochial churches and those which were conventual or collegiate, and especially of the peculiarities of those churches in which both purposes were united. This is a subject which I have often treated elsewhere, though I do not think that I have ever before been called upon to bring it at any length before my present audience. The general question I dealt with some time ago in a paper read before the Oxford Society, which was afterwards printed in the Builder. I have also followed it up in detail in my History of Llandaff Cathedral, and in various monographs and other papers in the Archæological Journal, the Ecclesiologist, and in the excellent publication of your sister Association north of the Bristol Channel, the Archæologia Cambrensis. Any of you who may remember what I have said elsewhere of Llandaff, Monkton, Brecon, Chepstow, Ruthin, Leominster, Dorchester, and Malmesbury, will recognize what I have to say about Dunster, as naturally forming part of the same series. To others, I presume that a general recapitulation of the whole subject may not be unacceptable.

The monastic and the larger collegiate churches of England may be divided into two great classes, those which were simply and wholly designed for the use of the monastic or collegiate fraternity, and those which at the same time discharged the functions of ordinary parish churches. In the generality of these latter cases, the eastern part, or the choir, belonged to the monks; the western part, or the nave, to the people. In fact, they often formed, to all intents and purposes, two distinct churches, and the two parts were often spoken of distinctly as "the parish