So the matter remained until, in 1903-4, the Archæological Institute decided to make Glastonbury the scene of its labours, and Mr. (now Sir William) St. John Hope was deputed to prepare a paper for their annual meeting.
Mr. Hope, having in mind such plans as Abbey Dore, where four chapels appear against the east wall of the retro-quire, reviews William Wyrcestre's statement in this light, and places on his words an alternative construction such as would be correct if that writer had been habitually precise in his descriptions. But he is not precise, and a general inspection of his writings will sufficiently show that he has a peculiar method of representing facts where number, series, locality, or dimension are involved. In the present instance he says:
"IN ORIENTALI PARTE ALTARIS GLASTONIE.
"Spacium de le reredes ex parte orientali magne altaris sunt 5 columpnæ seriatim et inter quamlibet columpnam est capella cum altare."
Mr. Hope thought that Wyrcestre counted each respond as a whole column, which would mean three whole columns and two responds or piers engaged with the walls north and south, suggesting, of course, four chapels only. He caused trenches to be cut east and west along the site of his supposed central dividing wall, and one north and south immediately outside the east wall of the retro-quire and across the gap where the central chapel of Willis ought to have been. But nothing turned up which to his mind was indicative of an extension of building beyond the line of the two remaining fragments of walling marking the eastward end of the retro-quire, and his conclusion is definite—that there was not, and could never have been, any such extension of a central chapel. And he claimed to have found support for his view of a mid-partition giving a total of four, and not five, chapels, through the confirmatory results of his excavation. Such was the position in 1907 when the writer commenced his studies, and it will readily be seen that no prospect of success could reasonably be expected to attend further research by excavation beyond this point.
All the evidence was sifted and discussed by F.B.B. and J.A. F.B.B. attached perhaps as little weight to the conflicting records of a longer measure as had those who went before him. But he distinctly preferred Willis's solution to others, as there was no gainsaying the significance of Wild's plan with its two intermediate column-bases. And instinctively he felt, as his friend also felt, that the question was not solved, the last word not said. More than once, the feeling returned that a chapel which was thought worthy of special mention by Leland, and which, according to his account, was the work of two Abbots, must have been a work of some importance.
Still, nothing came uppermost in the mind which would tend to modify the writer's respect for Willis's view, nor, indeed, to challenge its probability. It was rather with the object of defending this view, as against the contradictory one more recently put forward, that the intention was formed to examine, as soon as circumstances might permit, the site of Wild's twin piers, and to dig deep around the spot in the hope of finding yet some trace of footings characteristic of a crypt; for Wild noted these as being "probably part of the crypt," and it did not appear that anyone had taken the trouble to investigate this matter.
Wild's plan, incorporated in Britton's "Antiquities," may be regarded as a standard work. In this respect it claims greater weight than others such as Phelps's or Stukeley's, which are vague and inaccurate. Warner copies Phelps, and claims a fourteenth-century Lady-Chapel at the east, but neither Britton nor Stukeley, whose plan is two hundred years old, supports his view. Warner's note is quoted by Professor Willis (ref. to p. 31 of his Architectural History).