14 Notes on Recent Discoveries at Lacock Abbey. 



ran round the building. In the south-west angle the outline of 

 the original base of the shaft can easily be traced. The two-light 

 side windows, Hanking the entrance archway, are of rather peculiar 

 design. Their central shafts have caps at a much higher level than 

 the jambs, which cannot be considered a satisfactory design, but it 

 offends the eye less as it becomes more familiar. Of the many 

 mutilations that the work has suffered the earliest are due to the 

 nuns themselves, for the sake of their own comfort. Cuts have been 

 made in the bases of the window shafts, for the evident purpose of 

 slipping in boards, 1 and there are holes in the shafts and jambs, 

 where they were fixed with pins. These were, most likely, intro- 

 duced in the fifteenth century, and it is not improbable that they 

 may have been taken down in summer. Cuts have also been made 

 in the jambs of the central arch, for the purpose of fixing doors, 

 and the Early English cap of the north jamb of the arch has been 

 cut into for the purpose of inserting a horizontal board which, on 

 the south side, was let into a cut in the Perpendicular work. There 

 is painting of the fifteenth century on the arch of the thirteenth 

 century and on the adjoining Perpendicular work, and, as this was 

 evidently stopped by the board above-mentioned it shows that the 

 latter was inserted in the late Perpendicular period. This painting 

 also occurs on the side windows. 



After the dissolution of the abbey, Sir William Sharington, the 

 purchaser, converted this chapter-house into a dwelling-room, in- 

 serting a doorway of Renaissance character under the central arch 

 and closing the side windows, the whole being walled up flush 

 internally, which accounts for a good deal of mutilation, but the 

 earlier and later mediaeval work still remaining, partly exposed to 

 view, externally. Finally, Ivory Talbot, my ancestor, in the last 

 century, after other changes, 2 walled the whole up flush, externally, 



1 I am told that the same thing has been found in the chapter-house of Durham 

 Cathedral. 



2 The opening of the doorway had been widened by cutting away some of the 

 stonework of the jambs, which weakened the support of the head, but this may, 

 perhaps, have been done before Ivory Talbot's time. Whilst the door still 

 continued open he added a pseudo-Gothic face to it on the east side. 



