By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 129 
building a row of cells upon the north of the arcade already in 
existence, to correspond to that upon the south. 
Next, did Bingham destroy the older building, or build on an 
independent site? i.e., is the older building still traceable outside 
what has since been the hospital? Our evidence on this point is 
fairly conclusive. Bingham’s Inventory, written the same day with 
his ordination of the hospital, mentions a “ mansus juxta vetus 
hospitale versus aquilonem.” It is true these words are ambiguous : 
they may mean only that St. Nicholas possessed a mansion to the 
north of the old hospital, and give no indication whatever as to the 
whereabouts of the old hospital itself. Still it is perhaps more 
likely that they should mean that the “ vetus hospitale” was to the 
north of the new hospital, then just built. So evidently Mr. 
Hickman took them in 1713: for he draws upon his sketch-plan of 
the buildings before 1502 a house to the north of the hospital, upon 
which he writes the words :—“ The house on the north side of the 
hospital mentioned by Bishop Robert in his ordination.” 
In his description of the map he says :—‘ On the north side of 
the hospital, between the new hospital and the churchyard or Litton, 
was a tenement given by Bishop Robert in his ordination, which has 
been since rebuilt in form of a church or hospital building: at the 
east end of which was a door through a wall out of the aforesaid 
additional buildings of the cross aisle into the churchyard. But 
since the poor people’s rooms are gone on the north side of the 
church (or cloister), and the chaplain’s lodgings which was over 
them, there are two rooms built at the east end of the said tene- 
ment (of late called the farm house, because the farmer that rented 
the hospital lands generally lived there) for two poor people, and a 
chamber and garret for the chaplain over them.” This passage gives 
us as much as we know about the site of the old hospital: and the 
map gives us the distance of the south wall of the building from 
the surviving row of arches as 75ft. This is precisely the distance 
of the south wall of the present brethren’s rooms from that same 
row of arches: so that we seem warranted in concluding that in the 
present men’s buildings we have the modern representative of the 
original hospital to which Countess Ela made her gift. I have long 
