DUNSTER PRIORY CHURCH. 5 
choir, fenced off by its own very goodly roodsereen. Nor 
is this separate parish church, taken alone, a building of 
very insignificant extent. I roughly estimated its whole 
length at 101 feet, 67 to the nave, and 34 to the chancel. 
The lantern I reckoned at about 21, and the choir of 
the monks at 59, making the entire dimensions of the 
whole building about 180 feet, or a little more than the 
length of St. Asaph, the smallest English cathedral. 
This secondary choir, so distinetly marked within the 
parochial part of the church, I do not remember to have seen 
elsewhere, and it is fortunate that we have an authentie 
record of the date and cause of its introduction at Dunster. 
It appears from documents quoted in Collinson’s Somerset- 
shire, that in 1499 a dispute raged in Dunster between 
the Prior and his monks on the one hand, and the Vicar and 
his parishioners on the other, touching their respective rights 
in the church which served both for the monastery and the 
parish. The matter was referred to the then Abbot of 
Glastonbury and two other arbitrators, who gave judgment 
that the Vicar and his flock should leave the monks’ choir 
wholly to the monks themselves, and make themselves a 
separate choir within thenave. Here we have the explana- 
tion of the arrangement which still remains; but the evi- 
dence of the fabrie shows that they did something more 
than merely introduce the new arrangement into an existing 
church; they very nearly rebuilt the whole church in such 
a manner as to give the new arrangement the fullest scope, 
and to effect the most complete separation possible between 
the two portions of the building. To understand this, we 
must go back a little to consider what Dunster church had 
been in earlier times, 
Though I have called the present discourse a monograph, 
