"Sir Berkley Lucy sold the fabric [stonework] of the chapel of Netley Abbey, to one Taylor, a carpenter of Southampton, who took off the roof, and pulled down great part of the walls. During the time that this Taylor was in treaty [contract] for the chapel, he was much disturbed in his sleep with frightful dreams, and as some say, apparitions; and one night he dreamt that a large stone, out of one of the windows of the chapel, fell upon him and killed him.

"The undertaker [Taylor], though staggered with these intimations, finished his agreement, and soon after fell to work on pulling down the chapel; but he was not far advanced in it, when, endeavouring with a pickax to get out some stones at the bottom of the west wall, in which there was a large window, the whole body of the window fell down suddenly upon him, and crushed him to pieces."

NOTE

This is from Willis's Mitred Abbeys, vol. 2, p. 205, 6, quoted in Miscellanies upon Various Subjects by John Aubrey (5th Edition, 1890; this anecdote, like many in later editions, was collected by some subsequent editor, not Aubrey himself, who died 1697.) Wikipedia dates the demolition to around 1704, without mentioning the demolition of the demolisher.

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