The cloisters are full of beauty and interest. They are of two stages in height, the lower plain, the upper very ornate, the windows being of four lights, with a circle of ten cusps in the centre, and a quatrefoiled circle within the enclosing arch over the side lights. The groining ribs are well moulded, and the details throughout carefully designed and executed. At the internal angles of the cloister are groups of saints on corbels and under canopies placed against the groining shafts, and there is generally a figure of a saint under a recessed arch in the wall opposite each of the windows;[26] besides which there are numerous monuments and doorways. Those on the east are the most noticeable. There is the entrance to the sacristy, with a sculpture of the Descent from the Cross in its tympanum; the entrance to the room in which the coffer of the Cid is preserved, with our Lord seated between SS. Mary and John and Angels; and on the south side are in one bay S. Joseph of Arimathea laying our Lord in the sepulchre, in another the Crucifixion; whilst sculptured high tombs, surrounded by iron _grilles_, abound. Indeed, I hardly know any cloister in which an architect might be better contented to be confined for a time; for though there are many which are finer and in better style, I know none altogether more interesting and more varied, or more redolent of those illustrations of and links with the past, which are of the very essence of all one’s interest in such works. One of the doors on the east side of the cloister opens into the old sacristy, a grand room about forty-two feet square, the groining of which is octagonal, with small three-sided vaulting bays filling in the angles between the square and the octagon. The corbels supporting the groining shafts are very quaintly carved with the story of a knight battling with lions. Here are kept the vestments of the altars and clergy, a right goodly collection in number, and three of them very fine. These are a blue velvet cope with orphreys, fairly wrought on a gold ground, and all the work bound with a twisted cord, which in one part is black and yellow; another cope, also of blue velvet, has a half-figure of our Lord in the centre of the orphrey, and angels on the remainder and on the hood, with wings of green, purple, and blue, exquisitely shaded and lined with gold; another has St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin, our Lord, and three saints, under canopies. In all of them the velvet ground was covered with a large diaper pattern in gold, done before the embroidery was _appliqué_.