Mark turned aside to examine the chapel. He had been warned by the
Rector to look at the images of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Mary
Magdalene that had survived the ruin of the holy place of which they
were tutelary and to which they had given their name. The history of the
chapel was difficult to trace. It was so small as to suggest that it was
a chantry; but there was no historical justification for linking its
fortunes with the Starlings who owned Rushbrooke Grange, and there was
no record of any lost hamlet here. That it was called Wych Maries might
show a connexion either with Wychford or with Wych-on-the-Wold; it lay
about midway between the two, and in days gone by there had been
controversy on this point between the two parishes. The question had
been settled by a squire of Rushbrooke's buying it in the eighteenth
century, since when a legend had arisen that it was built and endowed by
some crusading Starling of the thirteenth century. There was record
neither of its glory nor of its decline, nor of what manner of folk
worshipped there, nor of those who destroyed it. The roofless haunt of
bats and owls, preserved from complete collapse by the ancient ivy that
covered its walls, the mortar between its stones the prey of briers, its
floor a nettle bed, the chapel remained a mystery.
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