Local memory and tradition generally preserve some traces, however dim or distorted, of an architectural work of great magnitude and beauty, but it is a strange fact that this one had utterly faded out of knowledge save for some scattered and obscure notes in the pages of the old county antiquaries, which contained no hint of its identity.
Fig. 1.—Plan from Phelps's "Somerset," reproduced in Warner's "Glastonbury."
Shewing in dotted lines the reminiscence of an eastward Lady's, or Retro-Chapel, thought to have been built by Abbot Adam de Sodbury in the early part of the fourteenth century.
Two different states are shewn, both lettered 'F' by these authors, and here numbered 1 and 2. No. 1 shews by scale a projection from the retro-choir of 30 feet; whilst No. 2 gives a total length of 95 feet. This is called by Warner, "the chapel according to its original proportions." The two measurements are approximately harmonised by Leland's record of the lengthening of the choir by Abbot Monington to the extent of two bays, and the throwing out of his new retro-choir to the east, which would absorb about two-thirds of the length of this chapel.
[DISCOVERY OF THE EDGAR CHAPEL, GLASTONBURY ABBEY:]
AN ACCOUNT OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
The following is the story of the discovery which, in 1908, caused a good deal of public interest, and provided the archæological world with an object of attention.
Although known to a small circle of friends of the writer and his colleague in the research, and to the Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research, who was intimately acquainted with both, and in touch with them at the time, no publication of the circumstances has yet been made, and this was withheld largely for reasons more or less personal to the writer, though the intention had always been to make known the facts whenever the time should seem ripe for the disclosure.
The entire record has been preserved, and the testimony of both the writer and his friend being available, as well as the contemporary evidence of the Secretary of the S.P.R., it will be seen that the matter stands on a fairly good basis in respect of documentary witness.