THE READER’S PULPIT,
the admiration of every antiquary and person of taste. Its plan is octagonal; some broken steps lead to the interior through a narrow flat-arched door, on the eastern side. The southern half rests on the ruined walls, and originally looked into one of the outer courts. Its arches are open, unadorned with sculptured pannels, and bear marks of having been glazed. The corresponding moiety, which projected considerably within the hall, rests on a bracket enriched with delicate mouldings, which springs from a corbel. The western side is a blank wall. Six narrow pointed arches with trefoil heads support the conical stone roof, which is internally vaulted on eight delicate ribs, springing out of the wall, and adorned at their intersection in the centre, by a very fine boss, representing an open flower, on which is displayed a delicate sculpture of the Crucifixion, with St. John and the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross. The three northern arches, which were within the hall, are filled up, to the height of two feet from the floor, with stone embattled pannels, sculptured into crocketed tabernacles, with intervening buttresses terminating in pinnacles. On the central pannel is the Annunciation; the right-hand one bears figures of St. Peter and St. Paul; and that on the left, St. Wenefrede and the Abbot Beuno. The architecture of this elegant structure is referred to the fifteenth century. Much conjecture has arisen amongst the most eminent antiquaries respecting its probable use, but there can be little doubt, that it originally projected from the wall within the Refectory, and was used as a pulpit, from whence one of the junior brethren of the monastery, in compliance with the rule of the Benedictine order, daily, read, during meal times, some book of divinity to the Monks, seated at the tables below in the hall.
Southward of the pulpit is a large range of red stone building, now incorporated with the Abbey House, ending on the west with a high gable terminated by a flower, supposed to have been the Guesten Hall.
To the south-east of this is the Abbot’s Lodging; of which the only remnant is a portion of the cloister, consisting of three pointed arches, on the piers of which, are indications of the corbels and springers of an elegant groined roof. A similar fragment adjoins this at right angles.
North of the Abbey Church is the beautiful