Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory: A Short History of Their Foundation and a Description of Their BuildingsPerkins, Thomas, Rev.
History
Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory: A Short History of Their Foundation and a Description of Their Buildings
The angle between the choir aisle and south transept is filled up with
the vestry and the library above it. The south wall of this projects
beyond the wall of the south transept. This vestry is of Decorated date,
possibly rather later than the other Decorated work in the minster. The
upper storey forms the library. Its walls are finished at the top by a
plain parapet which conceals the flat roof. At the south-western angle
is an octagonal turret staircase, capped by a pyramidal roof rising from
within a battlemented parapet, and terminating in a carved finial. This
is of Perpendicular character. From the sharpness of the stone at the
coigns it would seem that very extensive restoration, if not absolute
rebuilding, of the walls was carried on in this part of the church.
The south transept is rather shorter than that on the north side; but,
unlike it, all the walls up to the level of the window are of Norman
date. The string courses on the western side are worthy of close
attention. One which runs under the south window is continued round the
Perpendicular buttresses at the south-west angle, and then again joins
the original course on the western face and runs to within a few feet
of the nave aisle, where it abruptly terminates. Above this for several
feet the walls have the same character as below; then the character
changes, and this change probably marks the junction of the Norman with
the Decorated work, which was added when the Norman chapel, which
occupied the lower part of what is now the south end of the transept,
was incorporated in the transept. Vertically above the termination of
the string course just mentioned, but at a considerably higher level,
another string course abruptly begins and runs along the wall, until it
passes within the roof of the nave aisle. The south end of this shows
the length to which the original Norman transept extended before the
walls of the chapel to the south were carried up in the fourteenth
century to form the addition to the transept. In the southern wall of
this new transept was placed a large five-light decorated window. In
this, as in several of the other Decorated windows already described,
the lights run up to the enclosing arch above. The tracery of this
window, as it now exists, dates back only to the time when the church
was restored in the middle of the nineteenth century. Up to 1891 the
side walls were about two feet lower than at present, and the gable more
obtuse. At the summit of the old gable stood a block of masonry carrying
a sundial; this, when the transept was altered, was removed, the new
gable being finished with a cross. A pillar was built in the churchyard
to the south of the western tower in 1894, and on it the block from the
transept bearing the sundial was placed. This sundial has two dates on
it--1696 and 1752, marking, no doubt, the year of its original erection
and of some subsequent repair. It is noteworthy that the figures used in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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