s.
There is a tradition that the bells of Gnosall Church were taken
from this tower. I can find no confirmation of this, and I cannot
believe it. For the church at Gnosall is of earlier date and
greater magnificence than that of Ranton Priory, and was, I
imagine, quite capable of having bells of its own."

It would be an advantage to archaeology if every one were such a
careful and accurate observer of local antiquarian remains as the
Rural Dean of Stafford. Wherever we go we find similar deserted and
abandoned shrines. In Derbyshire alone there are over a hundred
destroyed or disused churches, of which Dr. Cox, the leading authority
on the subject, has published a list. Nottinghamshire abounds in
instances of the same kind. As late as 1892 the church at Colston
Bassett was deliberately turned into a ruin. There are only mounds and a
few stones to show the site of the parish church of Thorpe-in-the-fields,
which in the seventeenth century was actually used as a beer-shop. In
the fields between Elston and East Stoke is a disused church with a
south Norman doorway. The old parochial chapel of Aslacton was long
desecrated, and used in comparatively recent days as a beer-shop. The
remains of it have, happily, been reclaimed, and now serve as a
mission-room. East Anglia, famous for its grand churches, has to mourn
over many which have been lost, many that are left roofless and
ivy-clad, and some ruined indeed, though some fragment has been made
secure enough for the holding of divine service. Whitling has a
roofless church with a round Norman tower. The early Norman church of
St. Mary at Kirby Bedon has been allowed to fall into decay, and for
nearly two hundred years has been ruinous. St. Saviour's Church,
Surlingham, was pulled down at the beginning of the eighteenth century
on the ground that one church in the village was sufficient for its
spiritual wants, and its materials served to mend roads.

A strange reason has been given for the destruction of several of
these East Anglian churches. In Norfolk there were many recusants,
members of old Roman Catholic families, who refused in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries to obey the law requiring them to attend
their parish church. But if their church were in ruins no service
could be held, and therefore they could not be compelled to attend.
Hence in many cases the churches were deliberately reduced to a
ruinous state. Bowthorpe was one of these unfortunate c