Leading into the church very generally there was a covered approach, greater or less in size, called the porch, from the Latin _porta_, “a door or gate.” This was usually at the south side of the church, and sometimes it was built in two stories, the upper one being used as a priest’s chamber, with a window looking into the church. In some cases this chamber was used as a safe repository for the parish property and muniments. In the lower porch, at the side of the church door, was the stoup, usually in a stone niche, with a basin to contain the Holy Water. With this people were taught to cross themselves before entering God’s house, the water being a symbol of the purity of soul with which they ought to approach the place where His Majesty dwelt. The mutilated remains of those niches, destroyed when the practice was forbidden in the sixteenth century, may still frequently be seen in the porches of pre-Reformation churches. Sometimes it would seem that there was attached to the water stoup a sprinkler to be used for the Blessed Water--as, for example, at Wigtoft, a village church near Boston, in Lincolnshire, where the churchwardens purchased “a chain of iron with a Holy Water stick at the south door.” [Illustration: HOLY WATER STOUP, WOOTTON COURTNEY, SOMERSET] The land round about the church was also in the custody of the people’s wardens. It was called the _Cemetery_, from the word _cœmeterium_, “a dormitory,” it being in the Christian sense the sleeping-place of the dead who had died in the Lord. It was likewise spoken of as the “church-yard,” or under the still more happy appellation of “God’s acre.” From an early period attempts were made from time to time to put a stop to the practice of holding fairs in the cemetery, or to prevent anything being sold in the porches of churches or in the precincts. Bishops prohibited the practice by Constitutions, and imposed all manner of spiritual penalties for disobedience. By the Synod of Exeter, in 1267, Bishop Quevil ordered that all the cemeteries in his diocese should be enclosed securely, and that no animal was to be allowed pasturage on the grass that grew in them, and even the clergy were warned of the impropriety of permitting their cattle to graze in “the holy places, which both civil and canon law ordered to be respected.” For this reason, the bishop continues, “all church cemeteries must be guarded from all defilement, both because they are holy (in themselves) and because they are made holy by the relics of the Saints.” The reason for this belief in the holy character of cemeteries is set out clearly in a letter of Bishop Edyndon, in 1348, where he says that