By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 



127 



1887, all sorts of opinions were expressed : some placing 1 them 

 earlier, some later than 1 245, but the best authorities thought they 

 might probably have been built about that year. 



Assuming then that they were built that year, in what shape were 

 those other buildings, which there plainly were, and which are since 

 demolished ? Was the hospital built on the plan of most such edifices, 

 "a long hall with vaulting [to quote Archdeacon Wright's words 

 again] and divided into bays by pillars " : the chapel at the east 

 end, and the inmates housed in cells in the aisles ? In other words 

 were there two such arcades (the other since gone with the rest of 

 the building) , and were the cells ranged outside them on the north 

 and south, the east end being closed by chapels ? 



That this was so there are two arguments. 



1. The common practice of the times; as seen in the hospitals 

 of Portsmouth, Chichester, and Wells. It is sufficient to refer again 

 to Archdeacon Wright's account of the Domus Dei at Portsmouth. 

 St. Mary's, Chichester, is built on the same plan, and so is Bishop 

 Bubwith's almshouse at Wells : a chapel occupying the whole of 

 the east end, and the only difference being that at Chichester the 

 cells are open to the central aisle, while at Wells they are closed up 

 into separate rooms. But note that if this plan had been carried 

 into execution at Salisbury, there must have been three separate 

 chambers, or chapels ; the two which at present exist, and a de- 

 molished one to the north of them : or rather (for the wall of the 

 present chapel which blocks up the arches certainly had no original 

 existence) it was one long chapel from north to south, divided into 

 three compartments by the two rows of pillars. 



2. That this actually was so is asserted, and very great detail 

 given, by a MS. in my keeping, which was written in 1713, by one 

 Mr. Hickman, the then chaplain, but evidently derived from much 

 older authorities. 1 And Mr. Bigge, the master at the beginning of 



distinctly says that the old barn was on the north side of the hospital : so that 

 nothing that it contained can have ever been in the hospital itself. There are 

 more than 200ft. between the hospital itself and the road which skirts the Close 

 wall : therefore there is ample room for a large Chnrch to the north of the 

 hospital. 



1 See Appendix C. 



