APPENDIX
"Within, this crypt had at the east an altar, in which was enclosed the head of the blessed Purseus, as of old it was asserted. Moreover, the single passage (of entrance) which ran westward from the curved part of the crypt, reached from thence up to the resting-place of the blessed Dunstan, which was separated from the crypt itself by a strong wall; for that most holy father was interred before the aforesaid steps at a great depth in the ground, and at the head of the saint stood the matutinal altar. Thence the choir of the singers was extended westward into the body (aula) of the church, and shut out from the multitude by a proper enclosure."
The matter contained in this tract is fully dealt with in the text, but here it only remains to draw attention to the mode of entry to the crypt referred to in Edmer's own words:
"Sane via una, quam curvatura criptæ ipsius ad occidentem vergentem concipiebat, usque ad locum quietis beati Dunstani tendebatur, qui maceria forti ab ipsa cripta dirimebatur."
We have seen how those words which I have put in italics in the above have been translated by Willis:
"Moreover the single passage (of entrance) which ran westward from the curved part of the crypt, reached from thence up to the resting place of the blessed Dunstan, which was separated from the crypt itself by a strong wall."
The late Sir William St. John Hope, in his illuminating article on The Plan and Arrangement of the first Cathedral Church of Canterbury, printed in The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, April, 1918, refers to Mr. G. G. Scott's translation of Edmer's description:
"Enclosed within the curved portion of the crypt extended westward a single passage-way leading to the resting place of the blessed Dunstan, which was separated from the crypt itself by a strong mass of masonry."
He then refers to Professor Baldwin-Brown's conjecture that "The form of the crypt was evidently that of a curved passage following the line of the apse and communicating with a chamber or confessio at the eastern limit" … "The passage followed the inner sweep of the apse"; he goes on to suggest that at Canterbury the two ends of this curved passage were joined by a straight passage forming the chord of the arc, but the position of the stair or stairs of access was not indicated.
Professor Baldwin-Brown's conjectures that there were north and south ways of access which were within the transept, leading direct to the straight passage.
Sir William St. John Hope doubted the correctness of Willis's translation, and he is supported by unquestionable authorities; he gives the passage thus:
"An unbroken passage-way, which upon its western edge the curve of the same crypt bounded, extended as far as die resting-place of blessed Dunstan."
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