[Illustration: THE LADY CHAPEL _E. Scamell. Photo._]
Though every care has been taken to preserve the old work, with a strict adherence to the general design, the greater part of the chapel is necessarily new. It is separated from the ambulatory by an elegant screen of ironwork, surmounted by a crucifix of white metal, which has been blackened into uniformity with the rest of the screen so that it can hardly be distinguished in the dim light. This characteristic of the church is preserved in the chapel by the omission of an east window. In place of it the wall-space above the altar is laid out in an arcading of five niches, with canopies and pedestals arranged in parallel lines, providing for a double row of statues, not yet inserted. The lower part of the wall is curtained, with a small canopy over the altar, containing an oil painting of the Virgin and Child as an appropriate form of reredos. There are three rather large windows on each side, of which those on the south are entirely new, but the sills and jambs on the north show a retention of fifteenth-century work. This appears again in the walls on either side of the sanctuary, each of which contains an arcaded recess of three divisions (the central glazed), those on the south forming the sedilia. The sanctuary is paved with Roman tesserae and coloured marbles, in agreement with the pavement beneath the High Altar, but of a less elaborate pattern.[7]
[Illustration: THE CRYPT _E. Scamell. Photo._]
#The Crypt# beneath the Lady Chapel has no internal connection with it, but is entered by an outside door in the south wall. Like the rest of the Priory buildings it has gone through many vicissitudes. Obviously built at the same time as the chapel, it is supposed to have been used originally as a receptacle for the bones exhumed from time to time in the neighbouring canons' cemetery. Passing into secular hands at the Dissolution, it was partly filled up with earth, and then used as a coal and wine cellar to the dwelling-house above, and eventually formed part of the manufactory before mentioned, the marks of which have been left here and there upon the walls. The little building is now equipped as a mortuary chapel, with an altar against the east wall, and an oblong space marked off on the floor before it, with the usual lateral candlesticks, for the reception of a corpse. As a general rule, however, the funeral services are held in the choir, where there are greater facilities. Though extremely simple, the architectural features are very interesting, the old work having been retained in the walls, piers, and windows, the vaulting alone being new. This merely consists of depressed arches, carried across from the north to the south wall, the intermediate spaces being overlaid with plaster.