[Picture: Abbot Milton’s Rebus, Milton Abbey] The abbey church stands immediately to the south of the mansion, separated from it only by lawns and a drive, and is used as a chapel by the present owner of the estate, a nephew of the late Baron Hambro, who restored it at great cost under the professional advice of that arch-restorer, Sir Gilbert Scott. The solitude, the size and beauty of the interior, are very impressive. Here is a place of worship like a cathedral, used for the prayers of a private household, and if you can by any means manage to forget the grotesque disproportion of ancient size and magnificence to modern use, you will feel very reverent indeed.
There is a monument here to that fortunate and successful time-server, Sir John Tregonwell, who so neatly trimmed the sails of his public conduct in those times of quick-change, between the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, that, although a Roman Catholic, he managed to enrich himself at the expense of the old religion’s misfortunes, and to die at peace with all men, although in the possession of property belonging to others. There is also a most exquisitely sculptured marble monument by Carlini to Lady Milton, who died in 1775. It represents her in the costume of that period, with her husband bending anxiously over her. A quaint little piece of Gothic fancy will be seen on one of the walls, in the shape of the sculptured rebus of one Abbot William Middleton, with the Arabic date, 1514, and the device of a mill on a tun, or barrel. Thus did the strenuous minds of the Middle Ages unbend to childish fancies and puns in stone.
A sign of the times may be noted, in the restoration and re-dedication of the long-desecrated Chapel of St. Catherine, on the hilltop to the east of the abbey. When the monastery was dissolved, the chapel of course fell out of use, and so remained until recently. It had in turn been used as a pigeon-house, a labourer’s cottage, a carpenter’s shop, and a lumber-room, and was falling into complete decay when Mr. Everard Hambro in 1903 decided to restore it. The varied Saxon, Norman, and Perpendicular architecture was accordingly repaired, and the building reconsecrated on St. Catherine’s night of the same year.