Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/141

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their's having reduced the city to ashes in 1322. It now serves the purposes of the county prison, and the assize courts, having been repaired and fitted up by Mr. Hanson, architect. The altera- tions were sixteen years in effecting, and forty thousand pounds consumed in the work, though the whole is not yet compleated. Nothing can exceed the beauty and convenience of the crown and nisi prim courts, which are in the chastest Gothic style; the wood-work oak, the furniture crimson moreen. The former contains two line full-length portraits by Allen, of Col. Stanley, and Mr. Blackburne, members for the county. The latter is the moiety of a space formed by fourteen equal sides, and capable of holding seventeen hun- dred people, whose roof is supported by live clus- tered columns with plain capitals, forming Gothic arches; the groins which spring from them ramify into a stone ceiling of open work, of singular beauty and fashion. In a passage adjoining to this court is a Roman votive altar found about six wars ago under the castle wall, at the north side; it is about two feet high, has a tlmribuhim on the top for incense, anil bears the following inscription on one of its sides:

DEO SANCTO MARTI COGDIOVIHINI IVCIVSBI. I'.S V. S. I\ M.

V 01.. II. K

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