Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/293

Rh angle of the south aisle. This peculiar arrangement makes the western porch a very singular one, having four doors to it, one to each point of the compass. The west doorway of the church, which is of course the eastern one of the porch, has also some unusual features, a stoup for holy water on each side, and a double niche for two images, one over the other. Of this very singular and elegant doorway a beautiful woodcut is " presented to the work by the Marquis of Northampton, President of the Society," a good example, which we hope will find many imitators. We have much plea- sure in being enabled, by the kindness of the Society, to exhibit this wood- cut to our readers, as well as the singular ground-plan of the church, and some other details.

The north and south doorways of the porch were evidently intended to allow a free passage through it. The western doorway opens into the small domestic building before mentioned; over this doorway is a niche for an image, with a contrivance for a lamp to burn behind it, doubtless for one of the theatrical effects so often found in the in Roman Church. The chimney of this lamp, and the opening for lighting it, or taking it out, from the upper room, still remains, though its object has not been understood by the writer of the paper before us.

Beyond this building and connected with it is the remarkable tower, square below and octagonal above, which appears to have served the double purpose of a campanile and a domestic building, as fire-places remain in the rooms, and the windows were provided with moveable casements, instead of fixed window-frames or louvre boards. On the north side of this tower, and of the building connecting it with the porch, are two other small rooms, now partly under ground, but which do not appear to have been so much so originally; in one of these also is a fire-place.

The west window is a good Decorated one standing clear above the porch, and flatly contradicting the notion that there was originally a room over the porch, which must have blocked up this fine window.

In the north transept-chapel there is a fine arched recess for an altar in the east wall; the obvious use of this arch is not understood by the writer of the description. In the south transept-chapel are also traces of an altar with a singular square piscina, of which there is a woodcut, but the artist and the describer did not see it with the same eyes; it is described as "under a pointed segmental arch," but is engraved like a square bracket projecting from the face of the wall, with the drain in it, but without any arch over it, and we believe this arch exists only in the fertile imagination of the author. Under this transept-chapel is a crypt, which should have