270 



principal timbers. At the north end of the refectory, adjoining 

 it, and all forming one block, are two storeys of rooms, of which 

 I could not determine the use. There is some A^ariation from 

 the usual monastic arrangement, I think, in their occurrence 

 there. The undercroft extends under the whole block of build- 

 ing. The whole is very fine 'Flowing Decorated' work of the 

 time of Edward III, and so closely resembles the excellent south 

 aisle of Christian Malford Church as to make me think it the 

 work of the same architect or set of masons, particularly as they 

 are not far apart. The cloister must have adjoined this block of 

 buildings on the east side— on the west side there is the steep 

 slope of the hill. There are no remains of the church which 

 must have been on the east side of the cloister nor of the other 

 conventual buildings." 



Mr. Davis supplemented this excellent description of Mr. 

 Talbot, than whom few were better acf][uainted with mediaeval 

 domestic buildings, by saying that he would give a somewhat 

 earlier date to the building than Mr. Talbot by some 50 or 60 

 years, and as to the block of these stories at the northern end he 

 thought it partook more of the character of a domestic hall with 

 its solar, &c., than that of a refectory. Might it not have 

 formed the Hospitium 1 There were many indications of con- 

 tinuous additions and alterations, even down to the time of the 

 early Georges, of which date was the internal wooden staircase. 

 On the exterior was a portion of a terminal or finial, buUt into a 

 stopped up window. As to the round arches inserted between 

 the bold buttresses that were partly original and partly built 

 subsequently to the Decorated buildings, he felt certain two if 

 not the three were Norman work, removed from some other 

 portion of the ruins and placed here for preservation. They 

 were moulded and worked precisely as the vaulting ribs of 

 the crypt of Joseph of Arimathea's Chapel at Glastonbury. The 

 Secretary and the Rev. H. N. Ellacombe combatted this view, 

 suggesting that they were more like the imitation of an old style 

 executed more probably in the 16th or 17th century. 



