The South Alley.—This alley has ten windows each of six lights, but below the transoms the lights are replaced by twenty carrels or recesses, two to each window. This was the place to which the monks resorted daily for study (after they had dined) until evensong. The first window—i.e. the westernmost window nearest to the slype—is a memorial to J. Francillon, Esq., a judge of the county court, who died in 1866. The glass is by Hardman.
The first two carrel windows were filled with glass of a simple and inoffensive nature, by T. Fulljames, Esq., and the rest were filled by T. Holt, Esq., to the memory of members of his family, their initials being inserted in the lower corners.
The last window in this south alley is a memorial to R. B. Cooper, Esq., as the brass tablet sets forth. The glass, which is by Hardman, represents the conversion and the execution of St. Paul.
Some of the windows in the cloister are glazed with a peculiarly charming white glass, which admits plenty of light, but is not transparent. The effect is most restful to the eyes after examining some of the bizarre creations in the other windows.
When the cloister windows are entirely filled with glass they will contain a history of the Life of our Lord.
Britton, in 1828, bemoaned the conversion of the garth into a kitchen garden, and showed how the accumulation of vegetable refuse was injuring the stone-work. There are still residents in Gloucester who can remember Dean Law digging up his own potatoes in the garth. This is now the private garden of the Dean, and is very simply, and therefore charmingly, laid out. It contains the old well of the Abbey.
The present Deanery was originally the Abbot's lodging, in which royal persons, high ecclesiastics, and nobles were entertained. When, however, in the fourteenth century, a new Abbot's lodging was built on the site where the episcopal palace now stands, the Abbot's old lodging was assigned to the Prior. The Deanery (which, however, is not shown to visitors), as it now stands, "consists of two main blocks, built on two sides of a court—the one to the south, in the angle formed by the cloister and the church; the other to the west, with the court between it and the cloister." The southern block, which contained the private apartments of the Abbot, consists of three large Norman chambers, one above the other, with their original windows enriched within and without with zig-zag mouldings. Each chamber has also in the north-east corner an inserted or altered doorway into a garde-robe tower (shown in Carter's plan, 1807), but now destroyed; and the two lowest chambers have their southern corners crossed by stone arches, moulded or covered with zig-zag ornaments. All these chambers are subdivided by partitions into smaller rooms. Mr. Hope says:
