422 PROFESSOR HUGHES 



bound St John's Street from the Front Gate of St John's to 

 the entrance to the lane. From this corner the wall ran 

 W.S.W. towards the 3rd and 4th buttresses of Trinity College 

 Chapel. The lower part of the wall was of clunch to a depth 

 of about 9 feet, and the top foot was of dark red brick. The 

 breadth of the wall was about 6 feet. There was a square well 

 or cesspool at the south side close to the street. Unfortunately 

 no remains that would give any clue to the date of the made 

 ground along or beneath the wall were preserved, so we can 

 only guess at its age. The fact that the lower part of the 

 wall was built wholly of clunch without any fragments of 

 Burwell or other oolitic stone from older buildings seems to 

 point to the antiquity of these foundations. A ditch with 

 black silt was crossed under the highest part of the new build- 

 ings in front of the kitchens, and this may have been an old 

 boundary. From the bottom of the made ground where it 

 rested on the gravel at a depth of some 13 or 14 feet, several 

 fragments of the old black cooking vessels and of dark green 

 glazed vessels were procured. We can only conjecture that the 

 wall was part of the Chapel of King's Hall, and that its posi- 

 tion gave rise to the Trinity tradition that Trinity Chapel used 

 to stand on St John's College ground 1 . 



Thus we find from an examination of the topography of the 

 town, and from the sections seen in the course of excavations, 

 that the boundaries of the old town were determined by the 

 physical conditions of the ground and the distribution of the 

 underground and surface waters; that the town occupied an 

 area along interrupted spurs of gravel ; that it was bounded 

 on the east by the King's Ditch, which was taken as far as 

 possible along natural depressions, and on the west by the 

 lower slope of gravel which fell towards the alluvium from just 

 beyond High Street (King's Parade) ; that there was an area 

 occupied by houses at the south-east end of the King's Ditch 

 by the King's Mill ; that this small area is almost encircled by 



1 [It is quite true that part of Trinity College Chapel stands upon ground 

 acquired from St John's College in 1511. Arch. Hist. n. 455 458. The wall 

 mentioned by Professor Hughes could hardly have belonged to the Chapel of 

 King's Hall, but more probably to one of the houses which occupied the site. Ed. ] 



