218 



Lacock Abbey. 



The southern chapel has in the south wall a piscina with 

 shouldered head and projecting trefoil basin. Directly to the 

 west is a moulded trefoiled arch forming the back of the door from 

 the church. 



The northern chapel had originally in the north wall a locker of 

 two divisions with rebates for shutters ; but this was destroyed in 

 the 15th century, except the sill, and a moulded arched wall recess 

 inserted, probably to hold another tomb. About the same time 

 the chapel was decorated with colour, which still remains in places. 

 There was a continuous band of interlacing lines round the wall 

 arch. The field of the vault was profusely besprinkled with black 

 five-rayed stars, and the flat chamfers of the large cross arch were 

 decorated with an elegant design of scroll and leaf work. 



The east windows are quite modern. In the last century, among 

 other of Ivory Talbot's " improvements," the east walls of this 

 apartment and the chapter-house were entirely removed, leaving 

 only the buttresses as support for the vault, and no indication of 

 any mediaeval windows existed. 1 



The large centre pier of the cross arches is formed by a cylinder 

 with attached columns at the cardinal points, and has moulded 

 caps and bases, and is supported on a wide plinth in the shape of 

 a bench table. The responds are half octagons, each with a single 

 attached column (towards the centre pier) having moulded 

 caps and bases, and the abacus and plinth of which return round 

 the octagons : but there is no bench-table beneath. The finished 

 floor level must have been at least 18 inches higher at the sides 

 than in the centre. 



The west wall contained the dorter stairs, and is therefore much 

 thicker than the rest of the wall of this side of the range. Towards its 

 north end is a doorway from the cloister, of two orders of chamfered 

 members ; the outer resting on jamb shafts (destroyed) with 



1 The windows removed by Ivory Talbot were square-headed two-light 

 windows of the sixteenth century, and are shown in the engraving by S. and 

 N. Buck already referred to. Probably the mediaeval windows, which gave 

 place to these, were late insertions ; as the upper stones of the wall ribs of 

 the vaulting were hollowed out, as if to receive. the heads of large windows. 



