HYDE ABBEY, HAMPSHIRE. THIS ancient structure is situated in the northern su burbs of the city of Winchester, and was first erected by king Alfred in the year 901, and completed by his son. Alfred, when king of the West Saxons, having brought over from Flanders the learned monk Grimbald, in order to assist him in founding his university of Oxford, also founded a house and chapel in Winchester for secular canons, under his government. He afterwards projected a greater foundation, and by his will ordered a noble church and college to be erected on the north side of the cathedral. This was begun in the ysar 901, and finished by his son Edward, who dedicated it to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter. It was called the New Minster, to distinguish it from the cathedral, or Old Minster, within the precincts of whose cemetery it stood. The building being completed, Edward placed therein secular canons, who remained here till the year 963, when they were expelled by Ethelwould, bishop of Winchester, and an abbot and monks put in possession of the house: but many differences and inconveniences arising from the too near neighbour HYDE ABBEY. hood of those two great monasteries, the monks of the New Minster thought it proper to remove to a place called Hyde, on the north side of the city, where king Henry I. at the instance of William Gifford, bishop of Winchester, founded a stately Abbey for them. This Abbey was the burial-place of divers princes and great personages; but of this once magnificent edifice, very little remains, except some ruinous outhouses, the gateway, and a large barn, once probably the abbot's hall, which seems to bespeak the workmanship of the twelfth century. The adjoining gateway, with the flat arch and a canopy, supported by the busts of Alfred and Edward, is probably of the fifteenth century. The church, which was built with flint, cased with square stone, appears, from traces of its walls, to have consisted of three aisles. The tower of St. Bartholomew's church is supposed to have been erected with stones collected from its ruins. Many capitals of columns, busts, and other ornaments, that have been dug out of the ruins here, are to be seen in different parts of the city, and particularly at the Bridewell itself, where there are also two stone coffins: but the most remarkable curiosity of this nature was taken out of the ruins above fifty years ago, and placed in a wall in St. Peter's Street, being an inscription in pure Saxon characters, containing the name of ALFRED, and the date DCCCLXXXI. |