18 Notes on Recent Discoveries at Lacoch Abbey. 
some very good Perpendicular work has come to light, bearing the 
arms of the Hungerford family, and also, on shields, the sickle 
badge of the same family; so that it is evident that one of the 
Hungerfords was a benefactor. Very probably it may have been 
Walter, Lord Hungerford, who was lord of the hundred of 
Chippenham and of the manors of Sheldon, Lowden, and Rowden. 
It is noticeable that, in the vaulting of the south walk of the 
cloister, occurs the shield of Heytesbury, flanked by sickles, which 
may have reference to the same Walter, Lord Hungerford. Above 
this Perpendicular stonework of the lavatory, the back of the larger 
arched recess is filled with a very interesting fresco painting, repre- 
senting the abbess, in her robes and carrying her crozier, kneeling 
to a saint who is a bishop, probably St. Augustine,' who is holding 
up one hand in benediction. The whole scene is represented as 
passing in a garden. In the smaller recess is another fresco, in a 
very shaky state, which apparently represents a female saint, the 
only part that is well preserved being the head of acrozier. ‘There 
will be much difficulty, I am afraid, in keeping up this second 
fresco when the unblocking is carried further. A number of 
fragments that we found seem to show that the front of the lower 
part of the lavatory was ornamented with narrow Perpendicular 
panelling, but it is not easy to make out the whole design. The 
whole was walled up in the sixteenth century. 
It has been assumed, too hastily, by various writers, that the letter 
K, in the vaulting of the south walk of the cloister, refers to the 
foundress and first abbess, Ela Longespee. It more probably refers to 
the abbess, Elen de Montefort. We found the letters EK and M, the 
initials of that abbess, in the spandrils of a fireplace of the fifteenth 
century, inserted in an Early English wall, under the present hall, 
which fireplace had been walled up. I may here mention that 
another abbess, of the de Montefort family, is to be added to the 
1 The nuns were Augustinian canonesses. There was a figure of St. Augustine ~ 
in glass, in a similar attitude of benediction, in the abbey, in 1684, which 
Dingley has sketched. He notices “some obliterated paintings and inscriptions ”” 
on the walls of the cloister, of which there is not much chance of finding any 
traces now, as they will have been destroyed, by re-plastering, in the last century. 
’ 
