S.E. angle of the transept gave access to the dormitory by the door,
seen built up on the outside.[444] This staircase also leads to the
various passages in the thickness of the walls, and the church
doorway leading to this stair is round arched and ranges with the
lower pointed arcade. The lower arcade of the south end is continued
along the west wall, and above this rise two widely-splayed windows.
All the lofty south transept windows have passages on two floors,
and the transepts had chapels on the east side. "The respond of the
great arcade against the south wall is beautiful in detail. Above
this there exist fragments of the responds of the triforium story
and the clerestory. All the above features of this part of the abbey
point plainly to its having some lingering remains of transition
style, retaining, as it does, some round arches along with the
general features of the design."[445]

The vestry or sacristy was built by Abbot Walter Painter between
1411 and 1433, and is a two-storied building, the ground floor
having a groined ceiling, still entire, and the upper room being
roofless. Its features are of fifteenth-century work, and the
building is in good preservation.

Only fragments of the conventual buildings remain. "An octagonal
turret marks the south-east corner of the chapter-house with the
south and east return walls, and adjoining the south transept is the
slype, the walls of which determine the other walls of the
chapter-house. On the wall of the south transept is clearly seen the
mark of the dormitory roof, with the door between the church and
dormitory now built up."[446] The north wall and a portion of the
west wall proceeding southward from it are all that remain of the
extensive enclosure of the abbey. The enclosure was said to have
been of great height and to have extended 1150 feet on the east and
west, 760 feet on the north, and 480 feet on the south. There were
great towers at the angles and entrance gateways on the north and at
the south-east angle. In the centre of the north wall is the
portcullis entrance gatehouse. The front wall is almost entire, and
the upper floor window is crossed by the corbels which carried the
movable wooden hoarding that was erected over the gateway when
required for its defence.[447] At the western extremity of the north