172 CRYPT BENEATH THE CHANCEL OF REPTON CHURCH. 
place this large recess was made to enable their vaulting to be 
formed and obtain some uniformity with the other sides. In its 
new side walls they continued the two courses similar to the old 
cornice along the return walls of the recess, but the sections, as 
might be expected, do not quite agree, nor even the levels. In 
both entrance passages the junction line between the Saxon and 
Norman walling is very distinctly marked by their being in different 
planes, and producing thus an angle of very rough junction. 
No. 5. Transverse section (looking east) through centre bay of 
crypt, and showing the external entrance formed from the north 
side of the church, perhaps on purpose for use in processions 
from the Priory, which lay to the eastward. 
No. 6. Longitudinal section, east and west through centre of 
crypt and floor of present choir, above which the situation of the 
blocked lights of the lower Saxon choir are seen. ‘The singular 
lowering which takes place in the construction of the inserted 
crypt work towards the west end might suggest that the Norman 
church had steps up to its chancel, which slope necessitated this 
result. But Iam obliged to confess that a consideration of the 
general state of the existing church and its levels seems to render 
the idea doubtful. Of course the sinking of the floor of the early 
Saxon lower choir was but an exaggerated version of the usual 
plan (almost universal in Saxon churches) of descending by steps 
down into the chancel. 
It is to be greatly hoped that whenever further improvements 
and repairs take place in the church this most interesting chancel 
and its belongings may receive tender handling. It wants but 
careful cleaning rather than ought else. The opening of its north 
light and the removal of the flat ceiling, the restoration of the lost 
gable cross, with the very very careful removal of'the modern 
plaster inside from the stone ashlar ov/y, but not from the surfaces 
originally plastered. This is in general all that is wanted to hand for- 
ward to posterity one of the most interesting monuments of Saxon 
architecture “Time and the Dane” (with other and later friends not 
a bit better, but rather zovse, than the last) have left Derbyshire. 
