214 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
XXX VII.—On Evivences oF THE PLAN oF THE CLOISTER GARTH AND 
Monastic Burtprnes or THE Priory or THE Hoty Trinity, Now 
KNOWN AS Curist CuureH CatHeprat, Dustin. By Tuomas 
Drew, R.H.A., Cathedral Architect, 1882. (Plate XVI.) 
[Read, November 13, 1882. ] 
Tue cloisters stood on the south side of Christ Church Cathedral, 
between the nave and the present railing in Christchurch-place. The 
abbey gateway stood exactly under the doorway of the present south- 
west porch, but some ten feet below it. The chapter-house stood 
seven feet to the south from the south transept. 
For many years the site and plan of the cloister garth and the 
surrounding monastic buildings, which must once have been a part of 
the Priory of the Holy Trinity, have been a matter of curious specula- 
tion tome. ‘The church alone has survived to our time. I knew it 
all before Mr. Henry Roe’s great restoration. Every detail of that 
restoration, with its marvellously interesting revelations of the church’s 
former plan, was familiar to me, as all the church is now. I had read 
all that is known to be recorded of it, but without meeting the most 
slender clue to the history or existence of the former subsidiary buildings 
of the monastic establishment. 
By Mr. George Edmund Street, R.A. (to whose marvellous instinct 
for the comparative anatomy, as I may term it, of a medieval building 
and profound architectural erudition we owe the re-creation of this per- 
fect and unique twelfth and thirteenth century church, from merest 
shreds of evidence) the site or plan of the monastic buildings wasuntraced 
and uninvestigated. I know this from the interesting account of the 
restoration penned by this great architect himself, and left unpublished 
at his death, the proofs of which, before its coming publication, it has 
been my privilege to read. It has been a matter of great interest to 
me, following, longo intervallo indeed, so great a master in the care 
of this cathedral, to alight upon some threads of evidence, not only to 
identify the site of the monastic buildings, but to trace their plan with 
a bold hand, leaving but little conjectural of what goes to fill in the 
outlines. 
I have long looked for even a hint to aid speculation as to whether 
the cloisters stood upon the north or south side of the church, as they 
indifferently do in the monastic plan. I inclined to surmise on the 
north, as nothing more unlikely than the south side asit exists, a steep 
declivity between Christchurch-place and the cathedral, as a site for 
the level of a cloister garth could have suggested itself. I had searcely 
entertained a thought of looking for anything so improbable. How- 
ever there is preserved in the cathedral, by some happy chance, a 
comparatively modern document, a map and survey of the cathedral 
property, with a schedule, prepared by one John Sedding in 1761. It 
