"The tower is considerably larger from east to west than from north to south, and on the ground and second stories is divided into two unequal parts, the eastern being the larger. The eastern division has formed the usual porch of entrance from the fore-court, with an arch eastwards towards the church, and two small doorways north and south from the covered walks of the fore-court. These doorways were destroyed in the thirteenth century, or later, when the walls were cut away and pointed arches as wide as the chamber itself inserted. On the west, an arch rather lower than that towards the church leads to the western division, which was not the baptistery, but a sort of vestibule to it. The baptistery itself stood, in the usual way, west of the tower and in the midst of the fore-court. A doorway of the thirteenth century now fills up the arch between it and the tower, which gives us the latest date up to which it can have stood.
"Ascent to the upper part of the tower must have been by wooden stairs or ladders in the western division. The western room on the second story probably had no use except as a landing. It received only a borrowed light from the baptistery, which equalled in height two stories of the tower. The eastern room was entered by a door from the other. It has windows on the north and south sides, and a triangular opening towards the church on the east. In the same wall, towards the north side, is the doorway which led to the gallery in the church, and which, I think, is an insertion of the tenth century or later.
"The third stage is now divided, but was originally one room, and that, as appears by the treatment of its details, an important one. I have suggested that it may have been used as a night quire. On the east is the very remarkable two-light window towards the church. There are windows in the middle of the north and south walls, and close by each is a round-headed recess very like those on the walls of the crypt at Ripon, and, I believe, like them, intended to hold lights.
"In the west wall is a doorway now towards space, but originally leading to an attic in the gable above the baptistery. This room cannot have been very convenient, but the treatment of its door-case marks it as one of some importance. Perhaps it was the abbot's room.
"Only part of the fourth stage remains, but enough to show that it was a single room like the one below; and on the east side, where the wall remains higher than elsewhere, is a doorway which led up one or two steps into the space between the ceiling and the roof of the nave. This seems to point to that loft having been used as the general dormitory.
"The tower must have gone up at least one more story, where the bells would hang, but that has all been replaced by later work.
"One reason for believing that the church at Deerhurst had aisles and lost them is that on each side of the nave in the Saxon wall, above the thirteenth century arches, is a three-cornered window like that from the second stage of the tower to the church, and looking as if it had served as a sort of squint from some chamber outside, which chamber is more likely to have been an attic in the roof of an aisle than anything else. If any such others existed at Deerhurst, there must have been separate access to them from the church or from outside, as they could not be reached from the tower."
THE MONASTIC BUILDINGS.
The chief remaining portion of the domestic buildings runs parallel with the wall on the right hand of the path leading from the gate in the churchyard to the west entrance of the church, and must have formed the east side of the larger cloister, as the corbels for the penthouse roof still exist in the walls, as they also do on the south wall of the church. Two doors into the cloister from the church, one at either end of the south aisle, have been blocked up.