A NORMAN DOORWAY IN PLYMOUTH. 



9 



round arch with a bold roll moulding and an enrichment of the 

 tooth ornament well carved and undercut, which is continued down 

 the jambs on either side. There were small attached pillars and 

 capitals to the jambs ; but it is evident, from the former being now 

 at the base of the masonry, that the doorway was taken from some 

 other place (probably an ancient religious house in the immediate 

 locality), and worked into these alms-houses of the seventeenth 

 century. 



: ^ ^.'7 



This doorway is probably the oldest existing architectural frag- 

 ment in Plymouth, and belongs to the earliest period of the town's 

 history, when Sutton or South Town was an appendage to the 

 monastery of St. Augustine at Plympton, which was founded in 

 1121. Amongst the remains at Plympton is a Norman arch of about 

 this date; the Plymouth doorway here described was probably 

 erected between forty and fifty years later. It is of freestone ; 

 and it is a curious fact that the Norman and Early English masons 

 appear never to have used granite in their buildings. 



c 



