it is probably some years later. Like Caistor and Harpswell, it is broad in dimensions, and the walls are thick; but it keeps the unbuttressed form, and the window with mid-wall shaft. This late survival of a type of building which has impressed its features but little on subsequent forms of architecture testifies to its close association with the life of the county, and to the reluctance of the masons to abandon a feature which was a familiar sign of the religious activity of the countryside. KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL BY C. HODGSON FOWLER, F.S.A. Within a few hundred yards of the line of the outside wall of the once-important Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead, founded in 1139, stands an extremely beautiful chapel of the purest Early English work, the special use of which is not known, but which was probably for the use of pilgrims to the Abbey and was probably served from it. It now stands solitary and desolate, greatly out of repair, with its north and south walls much out of the perpendicular, and its vaulting consequently twisted and its beautiful lines disturbed. That the settlement of its walls is not all of recent date is shown by the heavy fifteenth or sixteenth century buttress built against its north wall, but undoubtedly its dilapidation has seriously increased of late years. The chapel is a simple oblong in plan, measuring inside the walls 43 feet 6 inches in length by 19 feet 6 inches in width, with side walls 2 feet 8 inches, and east and west walls about 3 feet 2 inches thick. It is divided on plan into three bays by vaulting inside and by buttresses outside; and divided horizontally in two parts by strings running round the building externally and internally. The height from the floor to the inside string is 6 feet, and from the floor to the crown of the vaulting 21 feet. Both east and west gables have been taken down, and the whole building is now covered by a low-pitched roof hipped at each end, with a poor modern bell-cote of perhaps about the beginning of the eighteenth century. At the east end is a triplet of unequal lancets, with well-moulded arches internally and double-shafted jambs, the shafts having carved caps and well-moulded bases, the outer shafts also being banded. The centre light is 8 feet 9 inches high and 1 foot 2 inches wide, the side ones being 7 feet high and 9 inches wide. The exterior of the west end is extremely effective, a richly moulded doorway under the outer string, which is here raised to a height of 11 feet 10 inches, having above it a very well designed composition of three arches, all well moulded, the outer two being blank and the centre one containing a deeply-recessed vesica window about 5 feet 2 inches high and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter. The two side walls have each six lancets, each about 8 feet high and 9 inches wide, all with shafted jambs internally having carved caps and moulded bases, but plain splayed arches.