By C. H. Talbot, Esq. 



38 



the central tower. The screen may be of the time of Henry the 

 Seventh and, among the badges on it, are what looks very like the 

 Stafford knot and the rudder, which occurs on several Wiltshire 

 churches. Some Perpendicular stalls are worth notice, and a device, 

 occuring on them, appears to be a bird with two heads pecking a 

 human leg which rests on a tun, a rebus which I leave to the archae- 

 ologists to explain. 



With regard to the monument attributed to King Athelstan, the 

 most probable supposition seems to be that it really does com- 

 memorate him, though made so long after his time, and that it was 

 removed from its original position. The head seems to be a res- 

 toration, as it is said to be. 



The cloisters were on the north side of the nave and, in this 

 as in many other cases, the monks seem to have replaced the 

 original cloister, at a late date, wholly or in part, by a new one 

 vaulted with stone. I am inclined to think that the earlier cloisters 

 * generally had wooden lean-to roofs and arcades towards the garth such 

 as are still to be seen in some places on the Continent. The indica- 

 tions of the vaulted cloister are to be seen at the south-east angle of the 

 site they occupied, by the processional door, but somewhat obliterated 

 by the well-meant but rather uncalled-for restoration of the 

 Norman door at this point, which must have been mutilated in the 

 erection of the cloister and of which the mutilation therefore was 

 part of the history of the church. The east processional door, of 

 the fifteenth century, with a cusped arch, is seen beneath its restored 

 Norman predecessor. 



Modern buttresses have been erected against the aisle wall, where 

 the cloisters once stood, but the two western-most buttresses, 

 though modern, are older. At this point walls are carried across 

 the aisles, forming a chamber formerly used as a vestry, and solid 

 buttresses are carried up to the clerestory, in place of the flying- 

 buttresses of the fourteenth century. I think these were erected in 

 consequence of the ruin caused by the fall of the western tower and I do 

 not think the doorway between them is even the successor in position 

 of the western processional door, which may have stood further west. 

 The character of the original bases of the great Norman pillars of 



VOL XXI. — NO. LXI. D 



