There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops.

The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory of the town--a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.
Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline--these formed the ruin.

It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country.
Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides.

Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps.

A fringe of wallflower and grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.
All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.
Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby.