"All is well. We direct your course and will continue. There is some difficulty and ye must use your own intelligence. There are two chapels and ye must try and judge old and new. The scheme of Abbot Monington gave one, and under the church are remains yet older. The pillar of many shafts[20] was in the midst between the buttress and the chapel wall, and the great window needed the buttress to hold hym up. Seek out the choir wall, where the arches were behind the altar, and it will be plaine. Digge for the vestries on the south choir wall—there is somewhat left here, and there is alsoe a chantry under the window by the crosse.[21]
"Judge not the wall by the foundations thereof. They are mighty but—wee have told you—thin walls were over them.[22]
"Search far for the est end of Edgar's Chapel. It is but little damaged. S. Mary and S. Andrew's Chapels, over the ends of ye choir aisles."
The only reminiscence of a retro-chapel is to be found in the plan of the Abbey embodied in Phelps's Somerset, reproduced by Warner. Phelps shows a dotted-line extension of the east wall of the retro-quire of nearly the same projection as Willis's plan, but in this case it ends with a semicircle—a feature impossible for anything but a Norman chapel, which here would be out of the question. In a corner of Phelps's plan appears a similar diagram, but with the rectangular part much lengthened. Both are lettered "F," and the reference table gives "F" = Lady's Chapel. Warner copies this plan, calling this latter one "the Chapel according to its original dimensions." Neither F.B.B. nor J.A. had at that time seen Warner's copy of Phelps's plan, because the copy of Warner accessible to them in the Bristol Public Library had lost this sheet. But owing to the general haziness of the plan, and its numerous inaccuracies, and the entirely impossible suggestion of a semicircular apse (in a dotted-line figure), as well as owing to the suggestion "Lady's Chapel," these records had proved the reverse of illuminating, save as inspiring a guess that the original and shorter quire might very likely have been furnished with a Lady Chapel, for use in the remote days, before the western chapel of St. Mary had been opened up and thrown into the general series by the inclusion of the "Galilee"—a work of the fourteenth century, and that this Lady Chapel had been ultimately shorn of the greater part of its length by its absorption into the new retro-quire, what time Abbot Monington caused the quire to be lengthened by two bays (about 40 feet) temp. 1344 or thereabouts. Such an hypothesis would entail the deduction that after the lengthening of the retro-quire in the fourteenth century, there would remain at the east end a relatively short projection—say, of 12 feet or so—and some such reasoning may well have inspired Willis's scheme (see his plan in the Architectural History of Glastonbury Abbey), though he rightly rejected the semicircle as an eastern finish.
Q. "Was there any crypt under Edgar's Chapel? What were the clear dimensions of the chapel itself?"
A. "The cript is fallen in, but the clay is not the old clay. Clear out the midst thereof, and many fragments be there. The width ye shall find is twenty and seven, and outside, thirty and four, so we remember.
"BEERE, Abbas."
Q. "What was the clear internal length of the chapel?"
A. "Wee laid down seventy and two, but they builded longer, and he who followed made new schemes for a certaine roofe in golde and crimson, very cunning. Ye must use your talents, lest they weaken. Piece by piece ye shall rebuild it and there is enow, I wot, for ye.
"Digge east beyond the beds of feathered grasses. There was a passage to the east doore in ye walle to the streete. In the midst it remaineth. There was a lodging where now is the great howse, and wee loved passages. They were safe, and the priesthood loveth secret places. There is somewhat in us that loveth mystical things, so we tell not all, but leave it to the love which seeketh and is not wearied."[23]
At the time of this writing, only the west end of the chapel had been excavated, so that the length was still a matter of complete doubt. A massive wall running north and south had been found just about in the position of that shown as a projection in Willis's plan—namely, about 12 feet east of the walls of the retro-quire, and on the farther side of this the foundations commenced at a much higher level, indicative of a later extension by Bere from this point onwards. And the whole of this cross-wall must have been Bere's work, for it ran north and south for some 32 feet, and beyond that came the projection of its buttresses. When the continuation walls of the chapel to the east were further revealed, the clear width between their footings was about 18 feet, and as they were each about 6 feet 6 inches in width, the whole was not quite 32. So the suggestion in the script of a clear internal width to this chapel of 27 feet is by no means improbable if measured into the window recesses. As to the length given (72 feet), a total of 90 had already been spoken of, so that the 72 must represent the rectangular portion of the chapel, plus either the antechapel or the eastward extension only, either of which give this approximate total.
As afterwards revealed (see plan in Som. Arch. Soc. Proc. for 1908), the correspondence proved to be faithful, as the scale shows. Measure from the interior of the east wall of the retro-quire, which will include all the space within the antechapel of Bere's work, eastwards to the end of his rectangular walls, and the whole is close on 72 feet—viz., 12 + 5 + 50 + 5 in approximate measures.
There were several clumps of pampas grass on the high bank, but farther east than our advance at the moment. Another fragment of script, unfortunately now lost, again referred to one of the clumps on the south side, as being just west of a large mass of masonry. This was correct. The large mass in question is that which stands up high above the rest at the south-east angle of the rectangular chapel. Again, we have the curious and unusual suggestion of an east door to the chapel (compare the "Portus introitus post reredos," etc.). When, long subsequently, the two inclined walls of the apse were revealed, the gap in the middle was remarked. The footing on the north side of the eastern gap was cut squarely off, and evidently by intention, and was thus strongly suggestive of a doorway or archway here.
In "the walle to the streete" we may perhaps discern an explanation of the continuation of the angular wall on the south, which runs on for a distance not yet ascertained in the direction of the upper part of the town, and would have passed near the building which formerly occupied the site of the present Abbey House.
"Use your talents. Wee guide. It is meet. Noe worke, noe wage. All workes well. This wee tell you. Ledde was on the roofe—ne stones, the wych cometh from meaner buildings elsewhere. The stone tiles were high roofes but ye chappell was flatte or thereabouts.
"As how think ye the est ende would have looked to them who came from the green pathe in the wall?
"... and ye can see right well. Dig deeper: it needeth. Fear not. It will be clear to you ere another night fall. Even yet there is somewhat east and south to finde. Ye are skilled to find the stones which we put there. All are of the chapelle that ye have noted.
"Benedicite.
"WHYTTINGE, nuper Abbas."
It was not until several months later that the whole of Bere's rectangular chapel was disclosed. The bank increased in height as we proceeded east. But the farther we went, the more stone we found on the south side, until at last, at the south-east corner, a block of solid masonry was uncovered which rose several feet above the general level. And to the south of the last two buttresses on this side there came to light the trench or matrix of a small additional building, a chantry or a sacristy. These trenches were cleared and filled with solid concrete to preserve the record of the lost walls, which must otherwise have perished through the falling-in of the loose and crumbling earth.
SITTING XXXVI. 9th October, 1908.