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Summary
Author: Pring, James Hurly
Title: A memoir of Thomas Chard, D.D. suffragan bishop and the last abbot of Ford Abbey, Dorsetshire; late in the county of Devon.
Publication: London, T. Richards & Taunton, F. May 1864.
Price: £95
Reference: 09321
Full Description
8vo. (2)+42pp, etched frontispiece on india paper, (4) etched plates on india paper, (1) engraved plate. Publisher's blindstamped cloth, some spotting and light foxing to frontispiece and several of the plates and facing leaves. 19th century engraved armorial bookplate of William B. Broadmead (of Enmore Castle) on front pastedown endpaper.
Only edition of the first biography of the last abbot of Ford Abbey, the Cistercian abbey founded in the twelfth century, dissolved in 1539 and subsequently the seat of the Prideaux and Gwyn families. When Chard became abbot in 1521, the buildings were in disrepair and Chard carried out extensive restorations, added a great hall and was in the process of adding cloisters when the abbey was dissolved. Pring's memoir, written for the 1861 Congress of the British Archæological Association, provides a wealth of information on Chard and on the history of the abbey, and is accompanied by attractive etched plates showing details of its architecture.