Page:St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester (1917).djvu/28

20 angle next to the aisles, and their lowest stages had groined vaults like those of the aisles. The interlacing arcades which form the chief ornament of the west front do not seem to have been continued round the towers, and it is probable that such ornament as they had was reserved for their upper stages. One or other of them may have contained the great bell of which Morant speaks, unless the central tower of the church survived the Suppression. The details of the west front, as being the last part of the church to be finished, point to the fact that the church cannot have been completed till about 1160-70.

Nothing can be said of the internal arrangements of the church. The base of a wall crossing the south aisle remains opposite the fifth pier from the west of the south arcade, showing the existence of a chapel at this point. Some pieces of a pavement of mediaeval glazed tiles also remain in this aisle, some of the pattern tiles having the chevrons of Clare, a lion, or a geometrical design. The tiles are irregularly set, and probably not in their original position. In the north aisle some plain red tiles of later date remain.

In the eastern pier of the north arcade, on the side towards the aisle, is a small recess for an image, or possibly for a light.

The cloister was on the south side of the church, and the greater part of its north walk has been uncovered, with remains of a stone bench along the wall of the church, and the foundation of the inner wall which carried the arcade or windows opening to the cloister garth. A few glazed tiles remain on the floor at the north-west angle, where the western range of the claustral buildings joined the church. In normal cases there were doorways from the church in the east and west bays of the cloister walk, but here there was no door in the west bay; its place seems to have been supplied by a doorway, of which some slight evidence exists, in the north end of the western range. At St. Albans and Worcester a similar arrangement exists. The east bay of the cloister is entirely ruined, and its site now under cultivation, so that nothing can be said of the doorway in this bay. The fourteenth-century niche in the west bay was probably meant to hold a light.

The rest of the buildings round the cloister have perished, but their arrangement was no doubt on the customary plan, with chapter-house, parlour, and dorter to the east, frater and kitchen to the south, and cellarer's buildings to the west. The modern church of St. Botolph covers the southern part of their site.