Drew—On Christ Church Cathedral. 2s 
be traced along the back of the houses in Skinner’s-row, described as, 
for instance :— 
“‘The precinct wall, serving as a backside to the houses of Mr. 
Wingfield and Mrs. Parsons, in Skinner’s-row, and giving light to their 
back rooms.” 
Thus I can trace the limit of the monastic buildings at the south 
side. I was disappointed to come on no remnant of the eastern pre- 
cinct wall, in what is now St. Michael’s-hill, but Mason’s map lays 
down its limit, and it exactly coincides with the line of the west side 
of Christchurch-lane, as it existed in 1761, about the centre of the 
present roadway. It is parallel with the ancient wall to the west of 
the King’s Bench Court, before alluded to, so that here we have, with 
but little conjecture, the limits defined of the Domus Convrrsorvum, 
sometimes known as the Common House, which we would look for in 
the usual monastic plan, and we recognise, under a misunderstood and 
corrupted name, the ‘‘Commons House” of Christ Church Cathedral, 
so often mentioned in records, where sundry parliaments were held, 
the last in 1559 ; not a ‘‘ House of Commons,”’ but the common house 
of the guests, postulates, and brethren of the monastery. 
Analogy of similar plans would lead us to look for the abbey Gatz- 
way in the north-west corner of the group, and then we suddenly recall 
that we all remember it, unrecognised as such before the late restora- 
tion. There are photographs showing it extant. Little knowing 
that the cloister level lay nine feet under the surface of the soil, one 
did not recognise in the cellar-like arch above it the head of the 
Abbey Gateway. Its site was exactly under the doorway of the 
present south-western porch. A GatrHousE Lope, or parlour, should 
have been about here ; my restoration of this feature is purely con- 
jectural. Assuming the precinct boundary to fix the width of the 
Common House, I conjecture it as arched in two spans, with a row of 
pillars down the centre, as would be most usual in such a building. 
For the Rrrecrory, I have only, I admit, such slender evidence as 
the precinct boundary well-defined, and the analogy of other monastic 
plans affords: we know from precedents that it should be traced here. 
Taking all the evidence which has been recited, and other minor 
corroborative hints which the old plans afford, one can sketch the 
cloister plan so far, but to find that there would not be room for 
the refectory to stand east and west in the usual way, between the 
south cloister walk and Skinner’s-row. It could not have projected 
from the group standing north and south, as it does in other places ; 
because the limit of the precinct forbids. One then recollects the 
declivity of the ground, and that if it had been planned upon the 
same level as the cloisters, it would have been many feet below 
Skinner’s-row, and that passers-by would have looked down into its 
chimneys. Everything points to the conclusion that the refectory 
was not on the ground level, but on that of the dormitories, and 
extended over the south cloister walk. Here, again, the plans give 
