A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



the work which must be dated before the death of 

 Abbot Martin in 1 1 55. To the west of it is a stone 

 vice, entered from the north chapel, which probably 

 led to a wooden loft over the western bay of the south 

 aisle of the presbytery, the use of which is suggested 

 below, p. 445, note 3. 



The gable and west walls of the transepts have wall 

 arcades on the ground story below the windows, with 

 three arches to a bay in the gable walls and five in the 

 west walls. The arcades do not intersect as in the 

 presbytery aisles, and their section is slightly different. 

 The walls are divided into bays by half-round shafts 

 running up to the ceiling, and horizontally by strings 

 at the level of the clearstory and triforium passages 

 and the sills of the windows of the ground story. The 

 two upper strings have plain roll mouldings, and the 

 third is hatched, as in the presbytery. Each bay is 

 lighted by a round-headed window in each story, the 

 whole remaining much as it was first built, except that 

 i;th-century tracery has been inserted in all the 

 windows. A change in the section of the window- 

 jambs in the ground story of the gable wall of the 

 north transept marks a pause in the work, the older 

 work being as high as the springing of the window 

 arch in the east window, and not halfway up the 

 jambs in the west window, while in the west wall 

 only the wall arcades belong to this date. 



The south transept was rather more advanced at the 

 time of the change in detail, as the three ground 

 story windows in its west wall and the arch to the 

 south aisle of the nave all belong to the older work. 



The external elevations of the transept follow the 

 design of the presbytery, but the extra height in the 

 gable ends is taken up by a wall arcade over the clear- 

 story windows, and above it a single window in the 

 middle of the gable flanked by half-round shafts carry- 

 ing up the line of the pilaster buttresses, which stop 

 at a string just above the wall arcade. The upper 

 part of the original gable having been replaced by a 

 gable of steeper pitch in the 14th century, it is not 

 dear how the shafts were finished at the top. The 

 14th-century gables have crockets on the coping and 

 tall slender gable crosses, and the quatrefoiled parapets 

 on the cast and west walls are probably contemporary 

 with them. The gables are flanked by tall octagonal 

 turrets, with blank arcading on their lower stages, and 

 eight tall, round-headed lights in the upper. Origi- 

 nally they were capped with stone spirelets, but these 

 have given way to battlements, the arched corbel- 

 tables at the base of the spirelets being preserved. 



On the east of the north transept stood the Lady 

 chapel, begun by Prior William Parys in 1272, 

 finished before 1286, and consecrated in 1290. It 

 stood till 1 66 1, when it was destroyed for the sake of 

 its materials.' Its north elevation is shown in a draw- 

 ing by Daniel King,' where it appears as a building of 

 five bays with three-light windows like those still 

 remaining in the eastern aisles of the south transept 

 and in one bay of the eastern aisle in the north tran- 

 sept. Its width can be recovered from the abutment 

 cf its walls against the north transept, and it seems to 

 have had an internal arcade round the walls below the 

 windows, a fragment of which remains at its north- 

 west angle. It opened to the north transept with tall 

 arches in the two northern bays of the east aisle of the 



transept, and also to the north aisle of the presbytery 

 through a similar arch. The latter entrance was con- 

 nected with the chapel by a wide vestibule, to the 

 east of which was a small vaulted chapel, dedicated to 

 St. Thomas of Canterbury, with a chamber over it 

 which seems at one time at least to have served as 

 an anker-hold.' In the 15th century the space in the 

 angle of the presbytery and north transept was roofed 

 over and thrown into the area of the Lady chapel, a 

 new entrance being provided to it in the west b.iy of 

 the north aisle of the presbytery. The usual entrance 

 to the chapel seems to have been from the presbytery. 

 From the description of the chapel in Whittlesey's 

 continuation of the chronicle of Hugo Candidus,' it 

 appears that the building was not vaulted in stone, 

 and the buttresses shown in King's drawing do not 

 seem calculated to take the thrust of such a vault. It 

 had an image of our Lady and a Jesse, and round the 

 walls were statues of the kings of England with short 

 accounts of their lives. 



The details of the blocked archways which once 

 gave access to it from the church are exceedinglygood, 

 and make its destruction at so comparatively recent a 

 date the more to be regretted. The small chapel of 

 St. Thomas of Canterbury, on its south side, was 

 probably contemporary with it, and was vaulted in two 

 bays with a central pillar, the wall ribs of the vault 

 remaining on the south side, with a double piscina 

 like those in the aisles of the presbytery. 



William Parys, builder of the Lady chapel, was 

 buried in 1286, 'in the church before the image of 

 our Lady and Child on a column before the west 

 " caput " of the Lady Chapel." It is interesting to 

 note that in the west side of the base of the north 

 pillar of the arcade in the north transept, a 13th- 

 century triple base is inserted, perhaps belonging to the 

 pedestal of the image mentioned. 



On the west side of the south transept is a vaulted 

 building of three and a half bays, entered from the 

 transept by a 14th-century doorway in the middle 

 bay. Its unusual position between transept and clois- 

 ter is due to the fact that the line of the eastern range 

 of claustral buildings (chapter-house and dorter) was 

 fixed by that of the south transept of the Saxon 

 church, which was standing when they were built, 

 and as they were quite new at the time of its destruc- 

 tion by a fire in 1 1 16, they were not altered at the 

 building of the present church, whose transepts, for 

 reasons already explained, were set further east than 

 those of the Saxon church. This left a space between 

 the east wall of the cloister and the west wall of the 

 south transept, and it was filled up by the building in 

 question. It has a ribbed vault of three bays with 

 pointed transverse arches and diagonal and wall ribs, 

 and an extra rib on the centre line of the north com- 

 partment of each bay. The capitals of the responds 

 are scalloped, with square abaci, and it is lighted from 

 the west by three round-headed windows, each of two 

 trefoiled lights with a plain tympanum over, set high 

 in the wall to clear the cloister roof, the weathering 

 for which runs at the level of their sills. Each window 

 was set in a small gable, with a half gable against the 

 church at the north end, and the lines of these are 

 still to be seen, although the wall has been raised and 

 now ends with a level coping. The transverse arch 



' In the accounts of 1669 13 a payment 

 for *four new buttresses where the Ladies 

 Chappel stooJ, making all that handsome.' 



^ Gunton, History of the Church of 

 Peterburgby facing p. 65. 

 ' Op. cit. 99. 



< Sparke, Scriptorei, 149, 

 ' Op. cit. 149. 



438 



