after its augmentation, the scale both of the church and offices was not only abundantly sufficient, but planned from the first, as may well be thought-just as in the case of so many of our ordinary parish churches-with an eye to future possible, not to say probable, requirements. Thus-though until the site can be properly cleared it is impossible, in face of very early rebuildings and enlargements, to speak with absolute accuracy-we find evidences of a church having a transept of fifty-four, a choir (if as at present) of fifty-five, and a nave of fifty-six feet in length, exclusive of the crossing, which was about twenty feet square internally; in other words, of three aisleless members, all but exactly equal. Should the choir, however, as is far from improbable, have originally approached more closely to the proportions of the transepts in external projection, as in the contemporary secular canons' church at Darlington, and the Augustinian one at Brinkburn, then, instead of the ground plan forming a Greek cross, with the outer halves of the transverse limb cut off, it would have assumed the long, Latin shape, pure and simple. But digging only-a process at present quite out of the question-can determine this, as well as many other points of perhaps equal, if not greater, interest.

As to the domestic buildings, they were, for purely sanitary purposes, doubtless, and contrary to general rule, planned towards the north, that is, nearest the river. But very little, unhappily, now remains of them. Hardly anything more, indeed, than proof of their having been arranged in the ordinary way. From the dorter, which ranged in line with the north transept, and the still distinguishable angle formed in connection with it by the south wall of the frater -which ran parallel with the nave-the cloister-court might seem to have consisted of a quadrangle about eighty-eight feet square; that is, supposing it to have extended beyond the line of the west wall of the church, the nave of which was originally, as it is still, but fifty-six feet long. Only the south and east sides of the court, however, remain in anything like integrity; for of those north and west, though the line of the former is traceable enough, its extent westwards is not so clear.

But contiguous to, and in line with the north wall of the nave, running westwards, are some ruinous remains of walling extending to a distance of thirty-three feet, and which, as can hardly be doubted, formed the lower part of the south end of the western claustral range. How far exactly the open court itself and its arcaded walks overlapped the church cannot, without further exploration, yet be said. That they did so to some extent, however, seems

clear, from the fact that the north face of the flat pilaster angle buttress of the nave is carried straight down to the ground, and not connected by bonding with any other walling whatever.

About a hundred and twenty feet north of this line of walling are the remains of what was evidently the kitchen, due west of the frater, and which, projecting a little further towards the north, would seem to have formed the north-west angle of the block. Slight as these were even only a few years since, they are not only far slighter now, but deprived of all the evidence they once possessed, for the arch of the great fireplace was then intact, and, taken in connection with the site, pointed unmistakably to its former use. As thus constituted, the claustral offices composed a square, or parallelogram, of about 118 feet from north to south by 116 feet from east to west in full outside measurement, and containing an inner open, arcaded space of about eighty-eight feet by something like sixty feet. Such, as nearly as can now be said, were the dimensions of the buildings as erected, if not in the time of the first founder, at least up to about the end of the first decade of the thirteenth century. Yet with certain reservations; for there was evidently considerable rebuilding and extension of premises going on at a date so early as to have left, in work of such simple character, little or nothing to distinguish it from what went before. Thus, for instance, though there is nothing at present to show what the breadth of the dorter was in the first instance, or that it exceeded that of the primitive transept any more then than it does now, when the transept, like all the other limbs of the church, has been widened, it would seem most probable that at first, as at present (or till lately, to be more exact), the dimensions of the two corresponded, and that, instead of being over twenty-seven feet wide, they were both, like the original nave, only about twenty. And the same, or similar, increase in breadth may have attached, for anything we can at present tell, to the western range also. The width of the frater, which has probably remained. unchanged throughout, is about twenty-one feet inside and twenty-nine outside; and the late twelfth century walling of the dorter, including the entrance to the day-stairs, runs close up to its south wall eastwards, proving that in these directions, at any rate, the lines as originally laid down have never been interfered with.

Of the Abbey gateway, which at the sister house of Easby forms, both from its perfect condition and early character, so striking and precious a feature, neither trace nor even tradition remains. And the same holds good with respect to such enclosed, though more or less separate, offices as the infirmary, guest-house, &c. Nay, even the