484 Malmesbury Abbey, 



the aisle, is a small square-headed window. The wall was pierced 

 by a large pointed window, round which the upper string continues 

 as a label. What the original filling of this was it is impossible to 

 say, as in 1836 the present tracery was inserted and took the place 

 of plain square mullions and transoms, apparently of wood. 



The south aisle had a blocking wall put under the strengthening 

 arch on the west side of the seventh bay, and also in the small 

 pieces of the arcade beyond the new buttress. 



The north aisle had a thick wall built across it opposite both 

 the fifth and sixth pier, and these are carried up nearly to the 

 springer of the clearstory windows. When it is remembered that 

 the main vault was destroyed and no effort made to re-erect it, the 

 use of these great buttress walls is difficult to explain, unless they 

 show the intention, afterwards abandoned, of building here a small 

 tower to take the place of the fallen one. In the bay thus cut off 

 is an inserted doorway of the date of the foregoing work. 



Over the six western bays of the south aisle a low building was 

 added in the fifteenth century, having an almost flat roof, the in- 

 serted weather-course for which remains on the piers of the but- 

 tresses. It was reached by a continuation of the vice to the room 

 over the porch, and had a second entrance through the opening of 

 access, at the west end, to the space under the aisle roof. The 

 building is shown in the view in the first Monasticon, and had 

 square windows in its two eastern bays. It was removed before 

 1733. when the brothers Buck made their drawing. The use of 

 this building is not certain, one suggestion being that it was the 

 library, as that building occupied the space over the south aisle 

 at Norwich and Worcester, but in those cases the cloister was 

 on the south. Also, as the " lyberary " is coupled with the f rater, 

 in the grant to Stump, it is unlikely to have been this building, 

 which is as far from the f rater as it is possible to be placed. It is 

 now suggested, but with diffidence, that it was for one of the 

 numerous schools in connexion with a great Benedictine house 

 and, as the projecting place for the nave organs opened from it, 

 the building may have been for the song school, the master thereof 

 being the organist. 



