A Note on the Plan of St Augustine's Abbey Church

'66 THE PLAN OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S ABBEY CHURCH. the south side of the nave, corresponding with the Brenchley Chapel (now demolished) in the cathedral, only parts of the foundation remain underground. No record has yet been found about it. It was in the north east corner of this chapel that the stone containing the leaden cylinder was found, sealed up with a tile with its face downward. We have nothing also to explain the abrupt break in the south wall of the church just west of that chapel. Was the charnel house which is alluded to, somewhere there ? Doubtless when the south western tower, " the steeple " fell between 1538 the date of the dissolution and the conversion of the Abbots' lodgings into quarters for Madame Anne of Cleves, and the construction of the garden wall out of the debris of the church in 1539, it must have dragged down with it, or crushed the western end of the south wall, but more we know not. When the excavation of the cloister is complete we hope to be able to publish the plan of the whole monastery of which an outline up to that date was given in Arch. Cant., XXXV. We have the plan of the Infirmary buildings by Sir W. Hope with an explanatory note by Professor Hamilton Thompson, as well as a more recent one of the Frater and Kitchen, which shows not only the later Kitchen but at least an earlier and a later Frater and under them, but apparently quite disconnected, a rectangular building of the earliest date. All these have been incorporated in a general plan by Mr. Meaden which is just waiting for the cloister section. This, alas, can only proceed slowly for want of funds. We should be most grateful for help towards the completion of this work which has now been going on for over twenty-five years. NOTE.—Special thanks are due to Mr. Meaden for his land trouble in making arrangements for the lithographing of the plan, and in supervising the work while it was in progress.—ED.