By the Rev. Canon Moberly. 



129 



building 1 a row of cells upon the north of the arcade already in 

 existence, to correspond to that upon the south. 



Next, did Bingham destroy the older building, or build on an 

 independent site ? i.e., is the older building still traceable outside 

 what has since been the hospital? Our evidence on this point is 

 fairly conclusive. Bingham's Inventory, written the same day with 

 his ordination of the hospital, mentions a " mansus juxta vetus 

 hospitale versus aquilonem." It is true these words are ambiguous : 

 they may mean only that St. Nicholas possessed a mansion to the 

 north of the old hospital, and give no indication whatever as to the 

 whereabouts of the old hospital itself. Still it is perhaps more 

 likely that they should mean that the " vetus hospitale " was to the 

 north of the new hospital, then just built. So evidently Mr. 

 Hickman took them in 1713 : for he draws upon his sketch-plan of 

 the buildings before 1502 a house to the north of the hospital, upon 

 which he writes the words :— - " The house on the north side of the 

 hospital mentioned by Bishop Robert in his ordination/'' 



In his description of the map he says : — " On the north side of 

 the hospital, between the new hospital and the churchyard or Litton, 

 was a tenement given by Bishop Robert in his ordination, which has 

 been since rebuilt in form of a church or hospital building : at the 

 east end of which was a door through a wall out of the aforesaid 

 additional buildings of the cross aisle into the churchyard. But 

 since the poor people's rooms are gone on the north side of the 

 church (or cloister), and the chaplain's lodgings which was over 

 them, there are two rooms built at the east end of the said tene- 

 ment (of late called the farm house, because the farmer that rented 

 the hospital lands generally lived there) for two poor people, and a 

 chamber and garret for the chaplain over them." This passage gives 

 us as much as we know about the site of the old hospital : and the 

 map gives us the distance of the south wall of the building from 

 the surviving row of arches as 75ft. This is precisely the distance 

 of the south wall of the present brethren's rooms from that samo 

 row of arches : so that we seem warranted in concluding that in the 

 present men's buildings we have the modern representative of the 

 original hospital to which Countess Ela made her gift. I have long 1 



