ypt, vestry, and Chapter-house; and that it
was only after some such idea had been conceived and abandoned, that the
arches were thrown across from buttress to buttress, the vaulting
constructed against them, this ledge formed (by cutting away the slope
of the set-off), and the stone benches carried along the wall of the
Chapter-house.

The arch above the ledge has been mutilated to make way for a modern
spiral staircase of wood leading to the Library. Half-way up this
staircase there remain upon the wall and upon the buttress (if it may
now be so called) portions of a string-course which may be taken perhaps
as additional evidence for the theory that Archbishop Roger at first
intended to demolish the vestry and Chapter-house.[114] It does not,
however, match the external string on the other side of the choir, but
resembles the internal string in the choir-aisles.

The single window in the south wall is round-headed internally, and is
partially splayed on one side and not at all on the other: indeed the
wall here appears to have undergone some alteration. In this room this
wall is of the same thickness with the corresponding wall of the crypt,
which is not the case in the Chapter-house.

East of the above window a square-headed doorway opens into the apsidal
chamber enclosed by the corner buttress. This curious little chamber was
probably a sacristy or treasury. It has a recess in the west side, and
seems to have communicated directly with the graveyard. In the roof is a
slab which has a small cross graven upon it, and which may have formed
part of an altar.

The projection at the south side of the apse was probably one of the
responds of an arch against which the vaulting abutted, as in the crypt.
Under the east window the curve of the wall has been flattened, probably
to afford a better back for the altar, of which the step remains. On the
north side is an aumbry, with a recess adjoining it in the side of the
buttress; and on the south side is a smaller aumbry, and a piscina with
a projecting basin and a semicircular head, the latter cut apparently in
one stone. This again is probably one of the earliest piscinae in
existence. The curve of the apse is wider in this storey than below,
which partly accounts for the fact that the adjoining Decorated buttress
protrudes here into the room. There is also a difference in the stone
used, and in several other particulars, _e.g._, the two windows here
have very little exter