VOL. XIX. (>) 
LEONARD STANLEY 
TOq 
the Church, under which lies much unidentified old monastic 
work. The Whitmores, of Lower Slaughter, became owners 
of the latter site in the xvii. cent., and sold it to the Sandfords 
after 1700. 
Our second hypothesis therefore, namely, that the nave 
of the greater Church became the Parishioners' Church very 
late in the fifteenth century has two features to recommend it : 
(i) it was then the only one suitable to the then needs of the 
Parish; (2) and that the work then done in it was of an expensive 
and drastic nature, involving the destruction, not only of two 
earlier canopied monuments in the south wall, and the insertion 
there of a rood-stair with windows looking into the Nave ; 
but in the opposite (or north) wall a rather larger window, as 
at Pucklechurch, was made in order to light the Rood itself. 
The latter window is now partly concealed by a modern buttress. 
In addition, the whole character of the west-window was, 
at the same period, constructionally changed by the lowering 
of the Norman Arch* to where it now is (or some five feet), 
and giving the earlier 'narrow lights a combination into one 
broad window having a depressed, or segmental head. 
If we are not pressing the matter too far, these changes 
here seem of a kind so radical as to point to a complete altera- 
tion in the character of the Nave for a very definite purpose ; 
and they are precisely the constructional changes that would 
have been deemed needful for converting the Nave into a 
parish Church. The work was probably paid for by the 
parishioners and their friends, who, therefore, had little scruple 
in dealing with the obstructive monuments in the south wall. 
It may be asked, if the Nave was not a parochial 
Church here until the date of these changes, why did the 
monks need a stone-screen at the western tower-arch to 
separate their Choir from the Nave ? The answer is that the 
Nave with its altar had been at all times in use by the lay-officials, 
numerous servants, pilgrims, visitors, and patrons of the 
Priory, and that (as elsewhere) it, no doubt, had a small rood 
of its own, and altars, and other, now-vanished, tombs. 
Merely it was not as yet Parish property. 
I 
Cf. Diagram sketch. 
