Prior Crauden's Chapel is a most exquisite specimen of the Decorated period, designed by the same master mind that created the octagon and the lady-chapel. Crauden was prior from 1321 to 1341. Built as a private chapel, it was at one time converted into a dwelling, but is now restored to sacred uses as the chapel of the King's School. It is situated to the south of the deanery. It is of small dimensions, being only thirty-one feet long; and this is exactly double its breadth. The vaulted roof springs from clustered shafts in the walls; in the eastern half, on each side, are two tall windows of two lights, with most graceful tracery; at the east is a window of five lights, of equally beautiful tracery, filled with stained glass, of which the five lower figures are ancient and said to have been brought from Cologne. The west window has four lights. When Professor Willis was conducting some members of an architectural congress, in 1860,[3] over the monastic buildings, on arriving at this "beautiful little gem of architecture," in the course of his remarks "he pointed to the restorations that had taken place, and found that they were good ones, the actual mason's lines having been taken in some instances. In one or two cases where the work was destroyed the spaces had been filled up with plain block, purposely to show where the masonry had been knocked away." Some curious tiling is to be seen on the altar platform: there are figures of Adam and Eve and numerous unusual designs. On no account should this chapel be left unvisited.
The great gateway of the abbey, Ely Porta, remains in a nearly perfect condition. It was the place where the manor courts were held, and was in course of erection when Prior Bucton died in 1397. From his successor, in whose time it seems to have been completed, it is sometimes called Walpole's gate. At one time a portion was devoted to the brewery, and here the audit ale was brewed till so recently as Dean Goodwin's time.[4] It is now used partly as a house for the porter and partly for the school. The new buildings of the school, just opposite, are on the site of an ancient hostelry called the Green Man, which was "possibly the descendant of some mediæval lodging-house to which pilgrims resorted."[5]
Between Ely Porta and the cathedral are to be seen many fragmentary remains of the old monastery, some of Norman date, now forming parts of houses. Over the road to the west of these buildings there used to be a covered passage, called "The Gallery"—a name still retained by the street itself—leading from the bishop's palace to the cathedral. Access to this from the cathedral was in the western transept. The writer has not been able to hear of any engraving or drawing of this.
The remains of the refectory and of the Norman kitchen are in the deanery grounds. The guest-house is wholly absorbed in the deanery. There is a picturesque entrance into the close, on the north side, from High Street. The buildings on each side of it and the room above (now the muniment room) are quite ecclesiastical, though modernised and in part new. The eastern portion occupies the site of the sextry.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "History," 1771, Plate IV.
[2] Another instance of imperfect acquaintance with church architecture is found in one plan of the cathedral (not in Bentham) in which the lady-chapel is called the chapter-house.