33 8 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



seaport under the invocation of the patron saint of fishermen, 

 sailors, and travellers — Saint Nicholas. When Thomas Drew 

 was called in, it must have occurred to him, as it would to any 

 architect, why in an extensive foundation like this were the 

 usual traditions or forms of St. Nicholas's Church planning 

 departed from ? Why were not the examples of Great 

 Yarmouth, Newcastle, Waterford, Galway, and the Continent 

 followed, with above all the triple nave so characteristic of this 

 saint's churches, or at least a cause for adopting the rude form 

 of Latin cross ? He soon found the evidences of the thirteenth 

 century buildings that led him to work out the plan as it then 

 existed, and which I have taken the liberty of copying from his 

 work in order to place before you. One of these plans shows 

 the church as it now stands, indicating the different stages of 

 its changes. In the angle of the transept and chancel he found 

 the fragments of the clustered column, which gave him a 

 starting-point to work from, and in the walls of the present 

 nave he discovered some of the old columns in sz'tu, marking 

 clearly the great lines of the arcading. Thomas Drew thus 

 describes the church as it stood in 1230 — " It may be persumed 

 that at the original foundation, the west end of which no trace 

 has been found, was on the site or slightly westward of the 

 present tower : that in its earliest form it consisted of a nave 

 75 feet long and, a strange peculiarity, 25 feet wide at the west 

 end, while it was but 22 feet wide at the east end. The nave 

 had on each side five pointed arches, springing from circular 

 columns opening into side aisles, and, opposite, the two eastward 

 arches on each side would appear to have been lateral chapels, 

 two on the south and two on the north, which occupied nearly 

 the area of the present transept. These chapels were most 

 probably dedicated under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, 

 St. Patrick, as the national saint, St. Nicholas the patron, and 

 St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Order ; but 

 this of course is purely conjectural, or they may have been 

 endowed as chantries. The high altar was set to the eastward 

 of this nave in a chancel, the dimensions of /which we have no 



