Numerous other mural monuments and inscriptions of more modern dates, many of which are chaste and elegant, record deceased members of the principal families of the parish.
Southwestward of the church, on the margin of the Meole Brook, stands,
THE MONK’S INFIRMARY,
where “crepytude and age a laste asylume founde.” The building is of red stone, in length about 130 feet, and originally consisted of two oblong wings, with high gable ends, pierced with round arched windows, connected by an embattled building resting on rude Norman arches, and lighted by three square headed windows between strong shelving buttresses. One of these wings next the street was in 1836 taken down, and modern houses erected on its site.
On the south side of the church are the remains of a long building, now converted into stables, formerly the Dormitory, or Dorter.
Of the spacious Refectory no portion exists, with the exception of
THE READER’S PULPIT,
the admiration of every antiquary and person of taste. Its plan is octagonal; some broken steps lead to the interior through a narrow flat-arched door, on the eastern side. The southern half rests on the ruined walls, and originally looked into one of the outer courts. Its arches are open, unadorned with sculptured pannels, and bear marks of having been glazed. The corresponding moiety, which projected considerably within the hall, rests on a bracket enriched with delicate mouldings, which springs from a corbel. The western side is a blank wall. Six narrow pointed arches with trefoil heads support the conical stone roof, which is internally vaulted on eight delicate ribs, springing out of the wall, and adorned at their intersection in the centre, by a very fine boss, representing an open flower, on which is displayed a delicate sculpture of the Crucifixion, with St. John and the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross. The three northern arches, which were within the hall, are filled up, to the height of two feet from the floor, with stone embattled pannels, sculptured into crocketed tabernacles, with intervening buttresses terminating in pinnacles. On the central pannel is the Annunciation; the right-hand one bears figures of St. Peter and St. Paul; and that on the left, St. Wenefrede and the Abbot Beuno. The architecture of this elegant structure is referred to the fifteenth century. Much conjecture has arisen amongst the most eminent antiquaries respecting its probable use, but there can be little doubt, that it originally projected from the wall within the Refectory, and was used as a pulpit, from whence one of the junior brethren of the monastery, in compliance with the rule of the Benedictine order, daily, read, during meal times, some book of divinity to the Monks, seated at the tables below in the hall.
Southward of the pulpit is a large range of red stone building, now incorporated with the Abbey House, ending on the west with a high gable terminated by a flower, supposed to have been the Guesten Hall.