230 Recent Excavations at Holy Island Priory. 



the others on the west side have disappeared : part of the foun- 

 datious of the western wall enclosing the cloisters was found 

 near this column. 



In the cloisters were probably the Vestry and Library men- 

 tioned in the various inventories of the Priory ; Canon Eaine 

 publishes extracts of several of these inventories, and gives in 

 full the last taken in 1533, three years beford its dissolution. 

 This, 80 far as regards the purely domestic buildings, is 

 repi'inteil in an appendix to this paper, not only because it gives 

 a vivid idea of the social condition of the monks at that time, but 

 as nearly every room and chamber is mentioned in succession, it 

 forms, when taken in conjunction with previous inventories, a 

 guide from which the uses of each of the portions of the building 

 may, with some fair degree of accuracy, be determined. 



The wall further outside the cloisters may have been the boun- 

 dary of a paved walk round the Cloister Garth, an irregular 

 quadrangle 60 feet in length, with an average width of 34 feet. 



It may be noted here that, with the exception of the cloisters, 

 and the buildings immediately opposite to them, which are at 

 right angles to the southern wall of the church, there are few of 

 the other blocks of buildings that ran parallel or at right 

 angles to each other ; and this is the more strange, as there is 

 nothing in the nature of the ground which would have pre- 

 vented them being laid out symmetrically. 



From the cloisters is first entered a room about 20 feet by 14 

 feet, but very irregularly shaped, in which are four columns 

 against the wall, all of different design, some round, others 

 polygonal, and one at the north-east corner seems to have been 

 no part of the oriy;inal construction. At the south-east corner 

 was probably the entrance to the staircase leading to the 

 monks' dormitories. The south wall of this room was panelled; 

 one stone of one of the covering arches of a panel still remains. 



In the accounts of expenditure for the year 1344-5, it is 

 recorded that money was expended in plastering (doubanti) 

 ^' the chapel of our Lord the Prior ;" and in the inventory of 

 1533 we find it stated that in the "Parlour" there was one 

 cloth for the altar there ; this room, which must have been 

 somewhat ornamented, and is in connection both with the Prior's 

 lodgings and with the great hall or Eefectory, may have been 

 this " Parlour," used also as a chapel. 



Communicating with this is a large room 36 feet by 21 feet 4 



