Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/456

334 334 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE. on the north, and the author is disposed to explain this difficulty by con- cluding that it has been removed from its original position, and replaced where it now stands. The reasons assigned are the following : — 1. The mistake of north for south might easily have occurred once, for William of Worcester is evidently a very careless writer, and has in other instances made similar mistakes ; thus, in speaking of the tower of the same church in another place, he calls the east end the pars occidenlalis ; but he is not likely to have repeated the mistake twice over, and in English as well as Latin. This reason appears (with all deference to the learned professor) to be founded on a misreading of the English part of the description attached to the drawing. He reads it — ' Thys ys the same moold of the porche dore yn the north syde of the chyrch of Seynt Stevyn.' The more correct reading appears to be — ' Thys ys the jame (jamb) moold of the porche door yn the south syde, &c.' The first letter of the word 'south' is indeed represented in the fac-simile by something more like a Greek tt than either an s or an ?i; but the remaining letters cannot be doubted. 2. The other reason assigned for the conjecture is, that 'the porch shews signs of having been taken to pieces and put together again in a clumsy manner ; for one stone on each side, containing one of the leaves, has plainly been turned wrong side upwards, and, if counterchanged, the error would be corrected.' Having examined the door on the occasion of a recent visit to Bristol, I must own my inability to perceive the symptoms of unskilful removal pointed out by the author. The porch has indeed undergone various alterations and restorations down to the period of living memory ; but the old mouldings, on each side of the arch of the porch, seem to have undergone less change than most other parts. The leaves in the two hollow mouldings (or casements') are indeed by no means very symmetri- cally arranged ; but the defect seems to be due rather to the original exe- cution of the different blocks of sculptured stone which compose the jambs, than to the careless collocation of them. The general disposition of the leaves in the two parallel hollows is an alternate one, with the excep- tion of the two lowest on each side, which appear to have been purposely placed in one horizontal line. This arrangement necessarily produces an irregularity, and the want of symmetry is aggravated by the irregular manner in which each leaf has been introduced on the block which bears it. Each block is nearly of the same length, but the leaf on it occupies a place more or less distant from one end of it ; nor are the leaves themselves made in pairs, so as to correspond with each other ; so that if every stone were detaclied and the moulding to be re-composed with them, I believe that master ' Benet, le ffremason,' himself could not make a perfectly harmo- nious and regular whole out of such ingredients. A suspicion crossed my mind (which I throw out for the consideration of some more experienced observer) that the lowest row of leaves on each side was meant to repre- sent four initial letters ; but the decaying state of the sculpture prevented me from coming to any satisfactory conclusion on this point.