108 The Belfry formerly *i (Hiding in the Close, Salisbury. 



al his righl side, the head being found above the shoulder, the 

 shield laid flat on the body, the sword — if he had one — at his side, 

 and the knife at his girdle. The two shield bosses in this case 

 sufficiently prove that these were two graves of men, but on the 

 other hand the spindle whorl, the ear-pick and the beads are articles 

 — especially the first-named — commonly found in women's graves. 

 One of the lower jaws preserved is, moreover, much slighter and 

 less square in outline than the other. The fibulae might belong to 

 either men or women. The position of these pairs of brooches seems 

 to have been either on the breasts, as in the Fairford graves, or just 

 below the shoulders, as in those at Harnham. 



%\t §dfri) fovmcrln stanbing in t|e Close, 

 ,$alisluui], anb its §cHs. 



By John Handing. 



^^JiE' ancient Bell-tower, or Belfry as it had been called from j 

 ; llrr|| the earliest times, stood between the Cathedral and the 1 

 north wall of the churchyard, very near the spot where there is I 

 now a solitary and weather-beaten old elm tree, which is shown in | 

 the print of the south-east view of the Belfry given by Hatcher as 

 a young tree, growing near the doorway. 



Visitors to the Cathedral during the dry summers of 1887 and! 

 1893, after passing a few yards into the churchyard on their way 

 to the north porch, could hardly have failed to notice, in the turf to 

 the left of the path, traces of the buried foundations of walls and 

 buttresses, mapped out in broad brown patches of withered grass. 

 These marks indicated the site of the old Belfry, and are visible j 

 from time to time after a long continuance of dry summer weather. j 



It is remarkable that no writer has left us any description of this [ 



