Page:The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland ( Volume 3).djvu/158

 of which (partly old and partly reconstructed) now subsist, and enclose a space measuring 89 feet from north to south by 86 feet from east to west. The north, west, and south sides are enclosed with a stone wall, and on the east side there is a row of structures comprising the chapter house in the centre, a ruined heap on the north side of the chapter house, and two cellars with plain barrel vaults on the south side.

The chapter house (Fig. 1055) is the only portion of the abbey in good preservation. It consists of an apartment about 24 feet square, with a central pillar, from which spring the ribs of the groined vaulting. At the side walls the ribs rest on corbels. The apartment is lighted with two traceried windows (Fig. 1056), the tracery of which has been renewed within recent years, after the pattern of the old tracery. The door enters from the cloister on the west. It is of semicircular form (Fig. 1057), and exhibits in its capitals some peculiar and striking sculpture. The leaves of the foliage are large and the design is remarkable, some of the leaves, which are probably intended to represent sun flowers, having very much the appearance of starfish. The interior of the chapter house doorway (Fig. 1058) has also some peculiar sculpture, and the manner in which the ribs of the vaults descend on the round arch-head is well managed.

—Glenluce Abbey.

Corbel in Chapter House.

The stone benches which surrounded the chapter house, including the abbot's chair between the two windows (see Fig. 1055), are much destroyed, but the central pillar and the vaulting are well preserved. The capital of the pillar is carved with foliage of a late character, and the corbels supporting the ribs of the vaults at the wall show similar work. One of these corbels is quaintly carved, in imitation of a figure clothed in the costume of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries (Fig. 1059), thus giving an indication of the date of the building. From this and the work on the doorway above referred to, as well as the character of the work generally, we have no hesitation in fixing the date of this part of the abbey about the end of the fifteenth century. The bosses of the vaults are carved with various devices, one of them bearing a lion rampant, which is probably meant to represent the arms of the founder, the Lord of Galloway.

The design of the tracery in the windows (see Fig. 1056) is good for the period. It is remarkably like that of the chapter house at Crosraguel Abbey, which was also fifteenth century work.

This sketch likewise shows the small portions of the church which still remain. The lofty south gable of the transept is visible with the sloping water table of the roof of the building, which stood on the south of it.