The interior has up to this time escaped ‘restoration.’ There have been repairs, but enough only to arrest decay, and the plaster has not been removed from the walls.[128] The length internally is about 49 feet and the breadth just over 16 feet. The floor is of brick, and the roof, which is almost flat, has been much renovated, but retains its original massive cross beams and wooden corbels. Internally the two western doorways are rounded, and just east of them the chapel is crossed by a late Perpendicular screen, which retains its folding doors, and has an uncommon effect due to the great length of the mullions in the upper part. The lower portion was once closed. It is perhaps more probable that this is the original position of the screen than that it ever stretched across the Sanctuary. Against the north wall is a fine old chest raised on feet and bound with many iron clamps ending in scrolls. It has a double lock and a ring at either end, and inside it is kept a curious bell of wood painted to resemble metal, and said to have been hung in the bell-cote by an unscrupulous official who had caused the real bell to be sold.
The ‘low side window’ internally has a depressed pointed arch, and is widely splayed, as are also the tall and the short window opposite. It is remarkable that although the windows differ so much externally, yet internally all except the ‘low side window’ and the east window are of the form known as the ‘shouldered arch,’ a form which, by-the-way, is more usually employed in doorways.
In front of the Sanctuary are preserved two old Perpendicular pews or stalls, with carved finials. The Sanctuary itself is raised on two steps, and extends eight feet from the east wall. The blocked door noticed on the exterior would open into the chapel immediately west of the line of the lower step.
This is among the very few churches in the country which retain the pre-Reformation stone altar, and if the instance at St. Anne’s Hospital is genuine, Ripon thus possesses two examples of this rare feature. The altar here is 7 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 5 inches wide, 2 feet 11 inches high, and has no step. Two of the usual five incised crosses (the larger cross near the middle is probably spurious) may still be traced upon the slab, the lower edge of which is chamfered off. In the front of the substructure are two deep recesses. The altar is flanked by two stone brackets. On the north wall is a third, and in the south wall a piscina with two-cusped arch and projecting basin.
In front of the altar is a tessellated pavement 11 feet long and nearly 4 feet wide. It is chiefly composed of red and blackish tesseræ; but in the centre is a circular medallion containing a large four-petalled white flower with a red centre and small red flowers between the petals, all upon a ground of black. It has been supposed that this pavement was taken from the neighbouring remains of some Roman building. As regards the central medallion this is probably the case, but the rest of the pavement seems to be later work, perhaps of the thirteenth century.[129] At the south end of the pavement is the slab of another and smaller altar, retaining three of its incised crosses.
It appears from a document of 1306 that the chapel at that date contained certain ‘relics’ of St. Mary Magdalene.
Of the mediæval bridges of Ripon The North Bridge alone survives.[130] It crosses the Ure on nine arches with bold buttresses, triangular in plan, between them, and is prolonged, with three smaller arches, over the low meadow which forms the southern shore. It is from this shore that the best view of it is to be obtained, a few yards down stream. The arches, some of them recessed, vary in height and span, but all are round save two, over one of which there is a corbel-table below the parapet. The other side of the bridge was remodelled some twenty years ago.
[122] In the mediæval records the street is almost invariably called Annesgate, and indeed was probably named after the hospital. The form ‘Agnesgate’ is, however, not modern, for it occurs in 1462. It may have arisen from a trisyllabic pronunciation of ‘Annesgate.’
[123] Thus far I am largely indebted to a paper on this hospital by the Rev. W. C. Lukis, F.S.A. in the twelfth edition of Walbran’s Ripon.
[124] Possibly those of Boynton or Plumpton (Parker).