A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



with foliate capitals and moulded bases. The clear- 

 story above the arcades is of the same date and has 

 four modern windows on each side. The roof trusses 

 1 modern richly foliated corbels with 



embattled r 



; parapets. There are s 



: late 



i jth-century bench-ends in the chapels. The charnel 

 beneath the east bay of the chancel is reached by a 

 winding stair, now replaced by modern brick steps, 

 and is entered through a moulded four-centred door- 

 way in the west end of its north wall ; it has been 

 vaulted with brick in modern times, and has two 

 barred mullioned windows and a third which is now 

 a door on the east. 



The chancel arch is an ugly piece of 15th-century 



are of the 1 5th century and have undergone consider- 

 able repair. They have moulded principals, purlins, 

 wall plates, &c, and there are figures of angels at the 

 foot of the principals, some holding shields. In 

 the north chapel the roof is flat. In the south 

 chapel the roof is ridged, with carved bosses at the 

 intersection of the ridge and the principals, which 

 run to the wall plates. The wall plates here rest 

 directly on the moulded and carved ha If- octagonal 

 corbels. Both north and south chapels have splendid 

 15th-century wooden screens inclosing them f in the 

 arches leading to the aisles on the west. That of 

 the north chapel has five two-light openings with 

 elaborate tracery, three to the north and two to the 



of Hitchin Church 



alteration. The original mid-i4th-century arch was 

 supported on half-octagonal jambs, simply moulded at 

 their heads. On these has been erected a high four- 

 centred arch with smaller shafted jambs. The outer 

 order of this is continuous and the inner is stopped 

 by the mean capitals of the shafts. 



The chapels are separated from the chancel by the 

 remains of 15th-century parclose screens. The north 

 chapel contains the organ ; it has an original traceried 

 east window of five lights, and the five windows of 

 three lights in the north wall are also original. A 

 small 17th-century communion table is in the vestry. 

 In the first column of the arcade is a tall moulded 

 niche of the 15th century, with a low projecting 

 bracket. This chapel also contains a 15th-century 

 piscina. The roofs of both the north and south chapels 



south of a four-centred doorway, equal in width to 

 two of the other compartments. The head of this 

 doorway is continued up into an ogee with rich 

 crockets, to the lowest string of the heavy moulded 

 cornice, which has a Tudor-leaf cresting. On either 

 side of the ogee is tracery similar to that in the 

 remaining compartments, which are separated from 

 one another and from the doorway by slender 

 buttresses with docketed pinnacles. Between the 

 north shaft of the arch filled by the screen and the 

 northernmost buttress of the screen is an extremely 

 narrow space, with tracery at the head, fitted to the 

 contour of the capital of the shaft. The panels 

 below the middle moulding of the compartments 

 have arches upon them with foliated spandrels, and 

 cuaped trefoils within the arches, with foliated pointi 



