Why have a number of statues in Bath Abbey been defaced with graffiti?

by · Mail Online

QUESTION: Why have a number of statues in Bath Abbey been defaced with graffiti?

Bath Abbey wasn’t always free-standing. Following the Reformation, various houses and shops attached themselves to the church and remained there until the Abbey’s restoration in 1833.

For hundreds of years, the occupants habitually used the Abbey as a thoroughfare. Inscriptions, including Marian marks (double Vs signifying the phrase virgo virginum, virgin of virgins), can be found in the main body of the church.

The most striking examples can be found on the Lady Jane Waller monument. She married Sir William Waller and died in childbirth in 1633. The ­monument features her figure in repose with her husband gazing down on her.

Waller was a leading Parliamentary general during the First English Civil War (1642-46). 

Royalist soldiers vented their dislike of Sir William Waller, who was a general during the First English Civil war by battering his face on the monument of himself and his wife Lady Jane Waller (Pictured)
The monument depicting the Lady, who died in childbirth in 1633, and her husband sits in the Bath Abbey (Pictured: Bath Abbey exterior)

Royalist soldiers vented their feelings against him by battering the face of his effigy. The damage can be dated because Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary entry of June 14, 1668, that he saw Waller’s effigy ‘lying with his face broken’. 

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QUESTION: Can the words ‘round’ and ‘around’ be used interchangeably?

‘Round’ is historically an adjective, in that it describes an object. A ball is round. ‘Around’ is an adverb, in that it qualifies how something is done, thus

you go around a corner. Therefore, in the strictest formal grammar, they are not interchangeable because they apply in different situations.

However, as has been so often observed, language continually evolves and ‘round’ is commonly applied as an adverb without misunderstanding.

Ken Wood, Newport, Gwent

QUESTION: Which hit songs took the least and longest time to write?

Further to the earlier answer, according to Bono, the last song on U2’s War LP had to be written rapidly because they were running out of studio time: ‘We wrote this song in about ten ­minutes, we recorded it in about ten minutes, we mixed it in about ten minutes and we played it, then, for another ten minutes, and that’s nothing to do with why it’s called 40.’ The reason it’s called 40 is because he took inspiration from Psalm 40 in the Bible.

Liam Brooks, Swansea

Pictured left to right: The Edge, Bono, Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton of the Irish rock band UK in Los Angeles in 2001

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