544 ST. OLETHEB OHAPEL AND HOLY WELLS. 



Presently, passing to the outside, and working along the 

 east end, some lengths of gable-coping and heavy wall-plate, 

 the sill, massive jambs, and the tracery of the east window, 

 were laid bare ; and when the men proceeded on, and removed 

 the delris from the east corner of the south wall, there were 

 found two jambs set in its face, with a granite trough within, 

 and a fallen arch just outside ; revealing a second well. 



Within this well, above the trough, there was noticed the 

 seeming lip of an out-flow ; — giving the first hint that there 

 might be a passage from the upper to the lower well, through 

 the east wall, and via the loculi. To test this point promptly, 

 covering-stones were sought, found, and taken up at the mouth 

 of the upper well, and when a carefully-hollowed granite drain 

 was observed underneath, passing into the East wall, all doubt 

 vanished. Long hazel rods were quickly procured from the 

 river-bank, and pushed up the line of the drain, from each 

 recess, and from the opening in the lower well ; and, with first 

 a trickle, then a rush, down came the water through the 

 original conduit, in which it had not flowed for centuries. 



It is necessary to be thus precise in description, in order to 

 show that all, having been buried up, had escaped injury. And 

 as, when the bramble roots and loose rubble were cleared off, 

 very particular care was taken that the lower courses of the 

 east wall were left absolutely untouched, the water arrangement 

 is now in exactly the same condition as when the chapel fell ; 

 there having been no interference or alteration whatever. 



No trace of a floor was found, and scarcely a chip of 

 roofing slate. The walls had apparently a very thin coat of 

 white plaster. 



The clearance completed, and pretty well all the wrought- 

 stone forming doorways, windows, wall-plate, and gables being 

 accounted for, it was seen that the Chapel was of fifteenth 

 century architecture, and of rough construction — e.g., nine 

 inches wider at the west than at the east end, with the plinth 

 on the north side nineteen inches higher than that on the 

 south ; the altar being roughly cut, the heavy top not even flat, 

 though chamfered underneath, and the front supports merely 

 tapered, to widen at the base. The three-light east window 



