stair. It has already been pointed out that there was a wide doorway into the room from the church.

The upper story probably contained an oratory for the use of guests, who were not allowed to enter the nuns' church. They apparently might hear the service from a gallery or closet, but were to withdraw before the nuns left their places so as to avoid being seen.1

There is nothing to show where the nuns' infirmary stood.

From a doorway in the middle of the east wall of the dorter subvault a covered passage about 5 feet wide with thin walls led eastwards for about 80 feet to a small building of doubtful dimensions of which only some scanty fragments remained. These consisted of a wall crossing the passage, with another projecting from it eastwards, the sill of a wide doorway with two steps on its east side, and a further length of wall going southwards, from which other walls extended westwards. As the building stood midway between the two cloisters it probably also communicated with the eastern or canons' cloister by another passage leading directly to it, but this had been entirely destroyed.

From the building occupying such a position it is likely that it formed the domus fenestrae or windowhouse. This seems to have contained a very small window (fenestra parvula) at which conversation was carried on between the nuns and canons, and a great turning window (magnu fenestra versatilis) through which food and other things could be passed. The opening of this window was to be less than 2 feet in height and width by three fingers' breadth all round, or about 18 inches square. The window-house must have consisted of at least two chambers, one for the two nuns who waited at the window, the other for the canon (frater fenestrae) who attended on the other side, with the turn and window in the partition wall.

2

1 66 Hospitales vero sorores, in oratorium introducere hospites possunt, hospitibus paratum ; dum moniales debitum horarum persolverint, set reducant eas antequam de choro exeant." Institutiones ad moniales Ordinis pertinentes, Cap. xxxiv.

"Fenestrae autem versatiles, per quas cybaria communiter emittuntur, vix duorum pedum fiant in altitudine vel in latitudine, videlicet trium digitorum latitudine ablata hinc et inde." Institutiones ad moniales Ordinis per• tinentes, Cap. vi.

The wall mentioned above as crossing the nuns' pas sage extended southwards for nearly 50 feet. It then deflected a little to the west for 31 feet, and finally continued with a further deflection westwards for 52 feet to the north-east angle of the nuns' church. The wall was throughout of a uniform thickness of about 24 feet, with a plinth on both sides. In the section next the church was another doorway. The space enclosed by the wall into which this led was probably the nuns' cemetery. It seems to have been subdivided in later times by a thin ashlar wall extending obliquely across it from north to south, just in front of the chapter-house. The object of this wall is not apparent, unless it was to shut out a possible view of the nuns from the late fifteenth century addition to the prior's lodging on the south

east.

THE CANONS' COURT.

The buildings of the canons' court, so far as they have been traced, consisted of a cloister 100 feet square, surrounded by vaulted alleys 14 feet wide, having on the east the dorter, above an undercroft containing the chapter-house, parlour, warming-house, etc. on the south the chapel, on the west the hall, and on the north the frater, which stood partly over the north alley of the cloister and partly over a vaulted undercroft parallel with it. Attached to the south-west angle of the cloister was the prior's lodging. The sites of the kitchen, the infirmary, and some minor offices have not been recovered.

The entrance into the cloister was by a doorway (Plate II. fig. 1) with two much-worn steps, in the north-west corner, in front of which a further series of five steps, segmental in plan and projecting into the alley, led down to the cloister level (Plate III.). The west wall in which the doorway was set has been destroyed almost to its footings, but a short length remained just to the south of the entrance, with the attached bases of the shafts that carried an arch which here spanned the alley on the line of the garth north wall (Plate II. fig. 2).

The north wall of the cloister remained to a height of