ag © June 21, 1872.
THE BUILDING NEWS.
WS MILLIAM
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ue @ FORENSIC OVER CELLARACE = ols s Zl PARLO os md 2 @ = re 23 1 o N a ia he KITCHE 22 Bao = @ 3° ss 5-124 a f 5 I E| ROMELAND : CREAT GATE ALMONRY . S. ALBAN’S ABBEY. Si1r,—The plan which I now submit is founded upon a coarse plan made by Dr. Stukeley, in 1719, and now in the King’s MS. (XV. 47) in the British Museum; a plan engraved in the latter part of that century, in the same collection (XV, 45. 7), furnished me with the ground plot of the north alley of the cloister. It will be found to vary in some very minor particulars from that which I published in the Buioine News, February 25, 1870, when I entered mere particularly into the architectural history. Recent MS. discoveries of important character enable me to supplement that description. One of the lesser porches, at the west end, was used by a new abbot for robing at his reception. The series of wall paintings on the arcade of the nave, by Thomas Houghton, the sacrist, is almost unique, and gives a good insight into the nature of internal decoration 5S. ALBAN’S ABBEY as practised in the early part of the fifteenth cen- tury. The Chapel of S. Mary of the Pillar was framed by a double iron “grate” or screen, a proto- type of the stone parcloses in the chapels of Ramrydge and Wheathampstead. Near it is the door which led to the abbot’s chapel, by stairs which have hitherto been referred to the dormitory, with the further conversion of a small recess into a con- fessional! The north window, which looked into the church, is still in the nave wall. Under this chapel was the Forensic Parlour, probably opening by a slype into the Great Cloister. At the west end the jamb of a door opening in this direction remains. On the north side of the nave are two Early English bases of an arcade which opened into S. Andrew's Church (1151-66), which contained three altars, and was rebuilt by Wheathampstead. The
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chancel-door also remains. ‘The first two altars at the nave-piers were consecrated c. 1340. The misnomer of the ‘S. Cuthbert’s Screen ” will, I hope, now be definitely abandoned for its proper designation, the Rood Screen. The altar of Holy Cross stood here in the thirteenth century, and the “pulpitum” had its ‘‘Rood Mary and John.” A second altar stood northward of it. In the south arm of the transept there is a watch- ing loft, which was accessible by means of a door high up in the wall towards the cloister. In the south- west wall-staircase there are traces of a door which led to the dormitory, and a second doorway which opened on the cloister roof. The Altar of S. Stephen, from certain indications, appears to have been con- nected with the Sacristy, serving both for the train- ing of young priests and the attendance of novices
and monks when “blooded.” A fragment of a vault-
