Historical references to the chapel of St. Peter on the Wall, Ythanchester, near Bradwell in Essex, will be given in the detailed account of the building, and need not be mentioned here. The Old Minster at South Elmham, Suffolk, has been connected with the mission of Bishop Felix, the Apostle of East Anglia, who gained the favour of King Sigebert, and set up his bishop's seat in civitate Domnoc, probably Dunwich, about 630. Here he remained for seventeen years. The fourth bishop in succession to him was Bisi, at whose retirement in c. 670 the see was divided and two bishops consecrated, Aecci to Dunwich, and Baduini to Elmham.

The reasons for considering that this Elmham was South Elmham in Suffolk, and not North Elmham in Norfolk, are set forth by Mr. Henry Harrod in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, IV, 7, and my purpose here is not to offer any criticism on his arguments, but to consider whether the character of the ruined building known as the Old Minster affords any grounds for the supposition that it belongs to the early days of the East Anglian see.

Passing to a detailed description of the remains of these buildings, it will be well to take first the church of St. Pancras at Canterbury. Until last November only the southern and western parts of the site had been thoroughly examined, these being in the grounds of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital. The chancel and north half of the nave were in private possession, and the owner considering that pigs were preferable to antiquaries as occupants of the ruins, no further explorations were possible. But fortunately this desecration is now a thing of the past, and the whole area is in the hands of trustees and has been thoroughly and carefully excavated under the supervision of Mr. Hope and Canon Routledge, with the result that the plan of the whole building, with the exception of the eastern apse, which has been destroyed to the foundations, is now clearly to be seen, and much valuable evidence as to the details of the masonry, etc. has been brought to light. The church consisted of an apsidal presbytery about 30 feet 6 inches long by 22 feet wide, opening into a nave 42 feet 7 inches long by 26 feet 7 inches wide by a

FIG. 1.-ST. PANCRAS'S, CANTERBURY.

In the centres of the north, south, and west sides of the nave were doorways leading into small rectangular

colonnade of four Roman columns, of which the base and part of the shaft of the southernmost remain in situ.

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buildings, that at the west being an entrance porch, the other two chapels, probably entered from the nave only. These latter are clearly adjuncts of the type called porticus by Bede, and will be so referred to in this account. The thickness of the walls in all parts of the building is 1 foot 10 inches. The walls of the nave remain to a height of about 1 foot to 1 foot 10 inches, and are built of Roman bricks in regular courses, five courses to a foot, set in a yellow-brown mortar, and have been plastered inside and out. Courses of herring-bone brick occur in both north and south walls externally, in the north on both sides of the doorway to the northern porticus, within the space contained by its walls, and in the south to the west of the west wall of the south porticus. The mortar is of good quality and hard, and several large pieces of walling from the upper part of the walls are lying where they have fallen, in good preservation, though unfortunately nothing has yet been found which gives any evidence as to the windows or architectural features of the upper part of the walls. At the north-west and south-west angles were pairs of buttresses 1 foot 10 inches wide and of 1 foot 2 inches projection, of brick like the nave walls. There were similar buttresses on either side of the western doorway, of which more hereafter, and one at each of the eastern angles of the nave. All three doorways have plain square jambs, and may have had arched heads, though no evidence remains on the point. Those on north and south are 3 feet 1 inches wide. The western doorway as originally set out was 7 feet 9 inches wide, but was altered during the building of the church to 6 feet 6 inches. It was further narrowed in the end of the twelfth century.

In the eastern wall of the nave is a colonnade of four columns having a central opening 9 feet wide, spanned by a brick arch, part of which still lies on the floor as it fell, and two narrower side openings, 4 feet wide, which may have had arches or flat lintels. These side openings were blocked up very early in the history of the church with a wall 1 foot 10 inches thick of Roman brick in

white pebbly mortar. Of the columns only a fragment of the southernmost remains in situ, namely, the base

and about 2 feet of the shaft-enough to show' that they were of a good period of Roman work, of 16 inches diameter at the base, and therefore probably about 11 feet high when complete; they had doubtless formerly adorned one of the public buildings of Durovernium, and are the only wrought stonework in the Saxon building.

The presbytery was almost entirely destroyed, either at the rebuilding of the eastern part of the church in the fourteenth century or at an earlier alteration in the twelfth, if the many fragments of that date now to be seen in the ruined chancel walls may be taken as evidence for such an event; but sufficient remains to show that the side walls ran straight for about 10 feet to a buttress similar to those in the nave, from the eastern side of which the apse started. Within the Within the space enclosed by the walls of the fourteenth century chancel no traces of the apse remain, its foundations having been destroyed in the interests of its late occupants the pigs, but externally enough of the springing exists to show that the plan must have been a half-ellipse, like that at Rochester, rather than a half-circle.

The northern porticus has completely disappeared; it was taken down in mediaeval times and its doorway walled up, but the marks of its abutment against the nave wall are clearly to be seen east and west of the blocked doorway, by breaks in the external plastering. The walls, or at any rate the lower part of them, were not bonded to the nave walls, and were built after them, though forming in all probability part of the original design.

The southern porticus measures 10 feet 6 inches by 9 feet 4 inches internally. The walls remain to a height of about 2 feet 6 inches and are built of Roman brick in white mortar, with joints wider than elsewhere in the church, four courses going to a foot instead of five. At either end of its south wall are buttresses of the usual projection. As in the northern porticus, its walls are not bonded to that of the nave. The remains of an altar against its eastern wall, though of a much later date, are of great interest as being the subject of the legend given by William Thorn, quoted above. The

walls of this porticus were standing in the eighteenth century, and are shown in illustrations to Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum, 1722, and Grose's Antiquities, 1755, the buttresses finishing with sloping brick heads about two-thirds up the height of the walls.

The western porch is of exactly the same dimensions as the southern, and doubtless the northern, porticus, but owing to the fact that its north wall formed part of the boundary between the monks' and lay folks' cemeteries of St. Augustine's Abbey, which boundary was not altered at the Suppression, this wall still stands to the height of 11 feet and more, and affords most valuable evidence as to the erection of the various parts of the church. It is built, as is the south wall, of which only a few courses remain, against the buttresses flanking the west doorway of the nave. These, in common with all remains of the nave walls now standing, are set in yellow mortar, as mentioned above. The porch walls show the white mortar, previously noticed in the southern porticus and the blocking of the eastern arcade, and are not bonded to the nave buttresses in their lower part. But at 3 feet 4 inches from the floor level the straight joint stops, and the nave buttress and porch walls are bonded together in such a way that it is clear that the porch was begun when the western nave wall was only 3 feet 4 inches in height, and that after reaching that level both walls were carried up simultaneously in the white mortar, which is to be seen overlying the yellow at the point of junction. If two other facts are added to this, namely, that the fallen fragment of the presbytery arch is built in yellow mortar, and that the mass of masonry lying on the floor of the nave abreast of the north and south doorways, and clearly being from the upper part of the nave walls, has white mortar, the story of the building of the church is clear. It was begun from the east, the presbytery and eastern wall of the nave built to their full height, the west nave wall built to about 3 feet, and the north and south walls to full height at the east, sloping down to the level of the west wall at their junction with it. Then came a break, in all probability a very short one, and building was resumed with the