remains, and shows that it was 4 feet wide, with ashlar jambs. It may have opened into a small porticus, of which there is no trace beyond the bonding of its west wall. There may have been a similar arrangement on the north of the nave, where the wall has been altered and marks of bonding are to be seen externally.

Of the triple arcade, as before mentioned, only the responds and part of the side arches are left. The responds are of 2 feet projection and 2 feet 5 inches wide, of brick, with a stone base course and another halfway up. At the springing of the arch two courses of brick are set out on the soffit, and the arch, which is of brick, semi-circular, and apparently slightly stilted, is set back from the face of the responds at its springing. From the curve that remains it seems that the three arches were of equal span; whether they were carried by stone columns or brick piers does not now appear. On the wall face above the arcade, and elsewhere inside the nave, are patches of a fine white plaster, very thin, which may be the original finish. There is no evidence as to the nature of the floor.

Of the eastern apse nothing can now be seen, but its roof was lower than that of the nave.1

The internal western angles of the nave show a curious system of bonding, by sections and not by courses, which produces an alternation of straight joints between the west and side walls which might be very misleading if the building were not as well preserved as it is, and in any case is an interesting commentary on the straight joints between practically contemporary pieces of masonry at St. Pancras's, Canterbury. walls of the west porch give another instance, being built without bond against the west wall of the nave for some 4 feet, and then bonded regularly as far as traces of them can be seen.

The

The last on the list is the ruined building known as the Old Minster, South Elmham, Suffolk. It stands within a quadrangular enclosure of some four acres called the Minster Yard, surrounded by a bank and ditch,

1 See Archaeologia, XLI, 447, and Archaeological Journal, XXXIV, 218,

for a description of the building in 1867.

and possibly of Roman origin. Mr. G. E. Fox, in his paper on "Roman Suffolk" (Archaeological Journal, LVII, 110) considers it to be Roman in form, but says that the evidence of Roman occupation or use is not established, as although Suckling speaks of "urns filled with burnt ashes and bones" having been found there, another authority, Mr. B. B. Woodward, says definitely (Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, IV, 4), that nothing whatever has been discovered within the enclosed area, though it has been cultivated and drained throughout. Nor is there any definitely Roman material to be found in the walling of the "Minster." The building consists of three parts, an apse to the east, a nave, and a western chamber. It is 101 feet 5 inches long and 35 feet wide, built of flint rubble set in exceedingly hard mortar; the facing, both internal and external, has been of flints and pebbles brought to a fairly even face, about 6 inches thick. This facing, together with all salient angles, has been extensively stripped off for building material; it remains chiefly on the upper part of the outer face of the south wall, and at all re-entering re-entering angles throughout the building. The whole outer face of what remains of the north and west walls has been removed. Of the eastern apse nothing but foundations is left, and a short piece of the west end of the south wall, 3 feet thick. The apse was slightly stilted, 21 feet 3 inches deep by 24 feet 5 inches wide in the clear. The nave has walls 3 feet 10 inches thick on north, south, and east. The north wall is almost entirely destroyed, with the exception of 6 feet at the west end, which remains to a considerable height, and contains the western jamb of a window. The south wall is better preserved, and retains parts of three windows, the easternmost of these being left to nearly its full height, and showing part of the head. All arrises are gone, and all facing, except a little on the splayed jambs. The south-east corner externally is in better condition than any other piece of the outer face; the salient angle has indeed been picked off, as elsewhere, but otherwise the walling is in good order, though much overgrown with ivy, and a certain amount of plastering, of the same quality as the mortar, remains. And here a question

arises as to what was the character of the angle dressings. Owing to its excellent quality, the mortar surfaces exposed by the removal of the designs remain sharp and unaffected by weather, and show accurate casts of the bonding ends of the materials used. These casts by no means suggest wrought stone quoins, but rather flints and rounded pebbles, the removal of which has, in some cases, not destroyed more than 3 inches of the angle. In one of the windows of the western chamber, to be mentioned below, so little of the external angle of the jambs is missing that it is very difficult to imagine that anything but flintwork dressings have been used. Against this it must be mentioned that very small ashlar quoins are common in the neighbourhood, and that the appearance of the window jambs in the north wall of the western chamber suggests that wrought stone has been there employed.

The opening from nave to apse is 20 feet 9 inches wide, the responds being square, of the full thickness of the wall, 3 feet 10 inches. The south respond has lost its salient angles, but retains some 5 feet of its facing on all three sides. A foundation of the full width of the responds runs from one to the other, at a higher level than the presumable line of the nave floor, so that there may have been a step here.

The western chamber is an exact square of 26 feet internally, with walls 4 feet 6 inches thick on all four sides. All stand to a considerable height, in places as much as 14 or 15 feet. In the eastern wall are two openings with square jambs on either side of a central pier, giving access to the nave. There is no evidence whether they were arched or square headed. They are 6 feet 8 inches wide, and retain parts of their jamb facing, in one case, up to 6 feet from the ground, but have lost their angles. In the north and south walls the window openings remain, two on each side. The eastern window in the north wall, and the western in the south, exist to their full height, except for a little masonry at the crowns of the arches. Heads, jambs, and sills are all splayed through the wall from inside to out, the splays of the sills being flatter than the rest; they retain at their junction with the jambs some

of the plastering with which the whole surface of the opening was originally covered. The sight-line of the sills is about 7 feet above the present ground level, and the window openings when perfect were 5 feet high to the springing, with semi-circular heads, and 1 foot 7 inches wide in the clear. There is no trace of built arches in the heads; the destruction of the wall surfaces makes it impossible to say whether there were facing arches on either or both sides; what remains of the heads is formed in the flint rubble, laid, no doubt, on centering as the walls went up.

As before mentioned, there are some indications of wrought stone dressings on the inner face of the jambs of the windows in the north wall, but the outer face of the west window in the south wall, where the wall surface is perfect to within a few inches of the window opening, certainly suggests that here, at least, they did not exist. The west wall has lost much of its central portion, especially up to 5 feet from ground level; above that, where the wall is more out of reach of the casual spoiler, it overhangs considerably, being held up by the strength of the mortar, and shows part of the jambs and springing of a large arched central opening 6 feet wide, the springing being 10 feet above the ground level, and the opening not splayed, but square through the wall as far as it is left.

Throughout the building the putlog-holes are a most noticeable and curious feature. Roughly speaking, they are triangular, with the apex of the triangle upwards in the lower part of the walls, and reversed, i.e. with the apex downwards, in the upper parts. They are also unnecessarily close together vertically, four rows occurring in less than 14 feet of height, so that the scaffolds would have been not quite 3 feet 6 inches apart; but this can be paralleled elsewhere in ancient work. They go about 14 inches into the walls, generally tapering inwards, and in many instances those on the inner and outer faces correspond exactly in level and position. Nearly all have a coating of mortar, and their greatest width averages 8 inches. Those with the apex downwards, occurring chiefly in the upper part of the walls—there are two such lower down at the east of the nave