MAINSBRIDGE HUNDRED 



HOUND WITH 

 NETLEY 



and south-west. Netley Castle, standing between the 

 abbey and the water, now shuts off the view on the 

 west, and the main road runs close to the church 

 and cloister on the same side, while houses are spring- 

 ing up on all sides, though hidden from view by the 

 ring of trees which grows on the high bank inclosing 

 the precinct. The bank looks as if it was partly 

 artificial, cut back to make a steeper boundary and to 

 gain more room on the somewhat restricted site, and 

 there is no trace, here or elsewhere, of a stone 

 boundary wall, though such 2 wall almost certainly 

 existed. 



The church stands to the north of the cloister, 

 close to the northern boundary of the site, and is 

 cruciform, its extreme dimensions being 237 ft. by 

 136 ft. The eastern arm or presbytery has north 

 and south aisles and is of equal width with the nave, 

 57 ft. within the walls and 60 ft. from east to west, 

 divided into four equal bays. Like all the rest of the 

 church it was designed for a stone vault, and is 

 square-ended, the aisles running as far east as the 

 main span. The walling is of rubble, originally 

 plastered, the columns, responds, windows, &c., being 

 worked in wrought stone, partly from the Isle of 

 Wight and partly Caen stone, the two being used 

 indiscriminately. The aisles are lighted on the north 

 and south by pairs of lancets in each bay, and single 

 lancets at the east, while the great east window of the 

 main span is of four lights, with uncusped lancet 

 heads, having a foiled circle over each pair of lancets 

 and a larger circle in the head. In the inner splay 

 there have been four detached marble shafts, with 

 marble rings of which the bonding ends remain, and 

 the arch is of four moulded orders. All the aisle 

 windows are rebated for wooden frames, but the 

 east window has glass grooves, and is clearly of later 

 date than the wall in which it is set. The arcades, 

 of which only the eastern responds remain, were of 

 three chamfered orders, with round engaged shafts on 

 the cardinal faces of the piers, and moulded capitals 

 and bases ; the single respond shafts in the aisle walls 

 being of the same character. Above the main arcades 

 was a three-light clearstory, and at the level of the 

 string at the base of the clearstory sprang the vault, 

 from short marble vaulting shafts resting on foliate 

 corbels in the spandrels of the arches. The vaults 

 were quadripartite with chamfered ribs and rubble 

 fillings, those in the eastern bays of the aisles still 

 remaining in part, while all the rest have fallen. 



The section of the ribs in these two bays is 

 different from that elsewhere in the presbytery, 

 having a single wide chamfer instead of a double 

 chamfer, the change of detail marking either a pause 

 in the work or a rebuilding of the vaults. The high 

 vaults belonged to the second type. Below the east 

 window the base of a large altar is still left, with a 

 large fifteenth-century corbel to the north of it, and 

 part of the altar in the south aisle also remains. 

 There is here a double piscina in the south wall with 

 small recesses in its east and west jambs, 12 in. high 

 from the sill, and to the west of it a locker rebated 

 for a door, and having a shelf. In the moulded 

 string, which runs at the level of the window sills, 

 are pinholes at the eastern angles of the aisle, and the 

 same thing occurs in the north aisle. There are no 

 remains of the altar in the north aisle, but at the 

 north-west of the east bay is a rebated recess with a 

 shelf like that opposite, and in the north-east respond 



of the north arcade a "Y-shaped groove as if for a 

 wooden bracket, 5 ft. 10 in. above the old floor 

 level. 



Of the tower which stood over the crossing only 

 the stumps of the piers are left, the inner orders of 

 the western arch having evidently been corbelled back 

 at some height from the floor level, to give room for 

 the stalls of the monks' quire. There is a curious 

 irregularity in the east side of the south-east pier. 

 The ' foundation stones ' of three of the four piers are 

 yet visible. On the north-east pier is H. ill gra rex 

 angl, with a shield of England and a cross, for 

 Henry III, on the north-west pier a crown sur- 

 mounted by a cross, perhaps for the queen, and on 

 the south-west a plain shield with a banner above. 



The north transept has been almost entirely de- 

 stroyed, and parts of it are now set up as a landscape 

 gardener's ruin in Cranbury Park, but its plan was 

 the same as that of the south transept, which is the 

 best preserved part of the church. It is two bays 

 deep, with an eastern aisle formerly divided by thin 

 masonry walls into two chapels, and in the angle 

 formed by the presbytery and transept is a stair in a 

 square turret. The chapels are vaulted, and remain 

 in a fairly perfect condition, the southern of the two 

 being lighted by an east window of two lights 

 under a semicircular head. The northern chapel 

 has only a single lancet on the east, being partly 

 overlapped by the stair turret, and a modern door 

 has been cut through below the window. In the 

 south wall of the south chapel is a piscina, and to 

 the west of it an opening broken through to the 

 vestry. Two bays of the eastern arcade of the tran- 

 sept remain complete, with equilateral arches of three 

 chamfered orders, and moulded capitals and bases ; 

 above them is the clearstory with windows of three 

 lancet lights in each bay, and rear arches with 

 engaged shafts in the jambs. The sills of the win- 

 dows are kept up to clear the former lean-to roof 

 over the chapels, and there is no continuous wall 

 passage here, but each bay was entered through a 

 doorway from the chapel roof. The thirteenth- 

 century vaulting shafts remain in the spandrels of the 

 arcade, being here of coursed stone and not of marble, 

 but the contemporary vault has been replaced if, 

 indeed, it was ever completed by an elaborate 

 fifteenth-century vault, of which the embattled 

 springers and southern wall-rib remain, all the rest 

 having fallen. 



The outer order of the main arcade on the east 

 side is carried as a blank wall arcade round the other 

 two sides of the transept, and the arrangement of the 

 clearstory on the west is like that on the east, except 

 that the passage is here continuous and the window 

 sills are brought down nearly to its floor level, there 

 being no external roof to block them. On the south 

 wall the clearstory stage is treated as an arcade of two 

 bays, each divided into two arched openings with a 

 blank quatrefoil over, and in the spandrel above the 

 bays is a large circular sixfoiled panel. The night 

 stair to the dorter filled up the south-west part of the 

 transept, opening to a doorway in the south wall at 

 the level of the clearstory. It came to the ground 

 close to the small recess in the west wall of the north 

 bay, which perhaps held a cresset, and the doorway 

 next to it on the south belongs to the post-sup- 

 pression house, being built up of old materials. In 

 the south wall is a doorway to the vestry. The south 



473 



60 



