Abbeys -- Scotland; Cathedrals -- Scotland; Church architecture -- Scotland
The oldest portions of the structure are those forming the eastern
range; they are of Transitional date or about the beginning of the
thirteenth century.[330] The sacristy has a stone bench round the
walls and three steps in the floor. It has a door from the transept
and an outer semicircular-headed doorway of Transition character
from the cloister. Access is also obtained by a small door in the
north side to a wheel-stair leading to the upper floors, and visible
as a projecting turret at the S.E. angle of the transept. The east
window of the sacristy is pronounced remarkable, having two
round-headed windows surmounted by a visica-formed aperture. It has
a piscina in the south wall near the east end. The apartment next
the sacristy may originally have been a parlour, but is now
appropriated as a mausoleum. There is an ambry in the south wall
near the east end, and the doorway is semicircular and of Norman
character. The floor of the chapter-house is several feet below the
level of the cloister walk; the ordinary central doorway and side
windows opening from the cloister are placed in their usual position
on the level of the cloister walk. The side openings were unglazed,
and were used for seeing and hearing what was proceeding in the
chapter-house below. The doorway is large and deeply recessed; the
outer arches of the windows on each side of the doorway are plain
semicircles, filled in with two pointed lights having a central
shaft.
The chapter-house retains its round barrel vault, and has three
pointed windows in the east end and two similar ones in the side
walls, where the chapter-house projects beyond the general line of
the buildings. In the interior a round arched arcade runs along the
east side, supported on single shafts, and there are traces of a
similar arcade running round the side walls. There is an entrance
doorway in the south wall; the east gable wall over the
chapter-house still exists, possessing flat buttresses of a Norman
type at the angles and between the windows, but the pointed arches
indicate Transition work. There is a lovely fragment of carved work
still preserved in the chapter-house, representing the pascal lamb
slain and surrounded by a wreath of foliage, above which are the
letters I.H.S. The vine leaves flowing from the lamb may symbolise
the branches springing from the true vine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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