The west doorway ([Fig. 900]) was evidently one of considerable importance. It was a double doorway, 8 feet 8 inches wide, the central pillar being about 14 inches square; only the merest fragment of the base of the doorway has been unearthed. The ingoing probably extended with a wide splay outwards, decorated with shafts, the base of one of these being in situ. The south-west corner of the church is one of the best preserved fragments. It consists of a deeply splayed base of beautiful masonry, with an angle buttress, measuring 7 feet on each face, with a projection of nearly 5 feet. This buttress probably contained a wheel stair for access to the roof. The north-west corner has not been cleared of rubbish. At the south-east corners of the transept and of the presbytery there are foundations (as shown on Plan), of which at present nothing definite can be made. The details of the church indicate a building in the first pointed style of the thirteenth century.
Entering from the south transept is the sacristy, a chamber 32 feet 4 inches long by 23 feet wide, covered with a round barrel vault. All the buildings to the north of the church appear to have been to a greater or less extent altered and adapted by the commendators, in order to form a mansion house, so that they do not now quite represent their original condition.
Fig. 901.—Balmerino Abbey. Plan of Charter House.
To the north of the sacristy is the chapter house, with a doorway between them, which is not original. This has been a very fine apartment, measuring about 56 feet long by about 27 feet 3 inches wide. It is divided into two compartments, the eastern compartment being the chapter house proper, and the western the vestibule (see [Fig. 901]). The eastern half is probably of a slightly later date than the western half. It was vaulted, like the western half, with groined vaulting, but at a much higher level and with arches of a much greater span, having had one central pillar instead of the two in the older part. The central pillar is entirely gone; and of the high vaulting only the wall ribs, with the corbels from which the ribs sprang, remain (see [Fig. 902]). From the indications of the ribs which remain, the vaulting has been restored in dotted lines. It is quite obvious from [Fig. 902] that this vaulting was removed to admit of an upper room at the lower level of the western vault.
Fig. 902.—Balmerino Abbey. Chapter House, from South-East.
The western division or vestibule ([Fig. 903]) has two octagonal centre pillars, with no wall responds in a line with them, the vaulting at the wall springing from rounded corbels; eastwards, there are two larger octagonal pillars with responds. The height of the pillars is about 7 feet 10 inches, and to the apex of the vaulting the height is about 14 feet 9 inches.