A Comprehensive List of Bath Abbey's Chapels and District Chapels

Somerset Parishes

Jointly with Wells, Bath is the head of a diocese comprising very nearly the whole of the county of Somerset; the income of the bishop is £5000. The parish of St. Peter and St. Paul, or the Abbey parish, and the parish of St. James, form a rectory, with the vicarage of Lyncombe and Widcombe (which see) annexed: theliving is valued in the king's books at £20. 17. 11.; netincome, £750; patrons, the Trustees of the Rev. CharlesSimeon. The Abbey church is a venerable and finelyproportioned cruciform structure, in the later Englishstyle, of which it forms oneof the purest specimens:from the intersection an irregularly quadrilateral towerrises to the height of 162feet. It occupies the site,and is built partly with thematerials, of the conventualchurch of the monasteryfounded by Osric in 676,which had subsisted, underdifferent forms of government, for more than 800years. This church having become dilapidated, BishopOliver King (as it is said, admonished in a dream, of whicha memorial is sculptured on the west front,) began to rebuild it in 1495; but dying before it was completed,and the citizens refusing to purchase it from the commissioners of Henry VIII., the walls were left roofless,till Dr. James Montague, bishop of the diocese, aidedby a liberal contribution from the nobility and gentryresident in the county, completed it, in the year 1606.The revenue of the monastery, at the Dissolution, was£695. 6. 1¼. The edifice has now, as before noticed,undergone a thorough repair and embellishment at theexpense of the corporation; but not in accordance withthe simplicity of its original style of architecture. St.James's church, rebuilt in 1768, is an elegant structurein the later English style. The Octagon chapel, in Milsom street, was erected in 1767, and is much admired:the living is in the patronage of the Rev. G. G. Gardiner.The living of the parish of St. Michael was until recently annexed to the Abbey rectory; but is now adistinct rectory, with a net income of £182: the church,rebuilt in 1835, is of early English character, with alofty and well-proportioned spire of great beauty.