Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ...panelling with which the French cased the walls, were both removed many years ago. The east end of this little nave was, during the middle ages, a straight wall, in which towards the south there was a piscina-like niche, beneath a simple pointed arch. The central portion of the wall was very slightly recessed, as if for the reredos of an altar. Northward of it, traces still remain of a bracket for an image, or a lamp. Behind the altar, there was, low down in the wall, a rectangular aperture (marked 9, iS on the plate), 22 inches high and 18 inches wide, through which persons could with difficulty creep. It admitted those who performed this gymnastic feat into a small apse, perfectly dark, but exquisitely adorned with painting. The apse corresponds in shape, in position, and mainly also in size, with that of the Chapel of the Holy Innocents on the north side of the crypt. Respecting the mysterious walling up of this apse, there are a few facts upon which we may found some reasonable conjectures. The recessing of the wall as for the reredos of an altar, and the insertion in it, north and south, of a bracket, .and an early arched piscina-niche, prove that the apse was walled up before the period of the Reformation. Upon examining the wall itself, it was found to be several feet thick, and it became obvious that, ancient as its outer western face undoubtedly was, that facing had been added, long after the apse had been first walled up. The original blocking-wall had been plastered, and painted, before the existing outer facing of stone was added. When this fact was discovered, in 1879, the idea of pulling down the blockingwall was abandoned, because it contains the only existing evidence of date; so that nothing more than a rough doorway, of..