B>, C. E. Pouting, F.S.A. 



23 



and yet the calcined stones used in the chancel seem to show that 

 some part of it must have been burnt anterior to this. The most 

 probable solution seems to be that the fire occurred early in the 

 thirteenth century ; that the chancel was so much damaged by the 

 fire as to necessitate re-building ; that only the roof of the nave was 

 destroyed, and that it had been renewed before the date of the 

 visitation. These discoveries, in any case, clearly show that in 

 1220 the Church was of its full present length, and (as we shall 

 presently see) with nave and aisles of nearly equal width to the 

 present ones. 



The remains of the thirteenth century work inside the chancel 

 are the westernmost piscina, with its shelf, in the south wall, and 

 in the north wall the doorway and the curious arched recess formed 

 in rubble masonry on the sanctuary floor-level. This is 3ft. 5in. 

 wide, 1ft. lOin. high to the springing, 3ft. 9in. to the apex and 

 lft. lin. deep ; the arch is of radiating rubble stones, and of slightly 

 pointed form. The recess is too small for a founder's tomb, and 

 from the fact that in 1556 an item in the churchwardens' book 

 alludes to a payment for " makynge iiijer pynnes f or the Sepulchre," 

 it was doubtless the Easter sepulchre. The doorway evidently 

 opened into some building, probably a sacristy or a small chapel, 

 on the north side of the chancel, as the rebate is on the outside. 

 This door was close to the west wall of the adjunct, and the west 

 jamb is not (like the east) of wrought stone, but rough masonry, 

 and indicates where it was cut away when the wall was removed. 

 There is a coeval piscina on the outside, eastward of the doorway, 

 which was for use in the sacristy. The use for this doorway ceased, 

 and the sacristy or chapel was removed, before the end of the 

 thirteenth century, when a two-light Geometrical window was 

 inserted over it, the sill of which formed a square head to the 

 opening, too low for use as a doorway. The present sill is not the 

 original one, for it has no glass groove (which exists in the jamb 

 and tracery, showing that the window was glazed and therefore 

 opened to the outside clear of any building), and it was fixed on a 

 higher level when the doorway again came into use — probably in 

 quite recent times. It could not have been used for the present 



