=The South Transept= was originally on the same plan as the north, but its aisles have disappeared: that on the west to make room for the cloister; while that on the east is now represented by the chapel of St. Lucy. Its appearance has also been much altered by the division of its southern bay into two stories, which reduces its length, since the lower story is the slype or passage that leads from the cloister to the cemetery, and is therefore to all intents and purposes outside the church. The upper story is reached by steps from the transept floor. The whole of this curious structure, which has the appearance of a small house built into the transept, is a modern restoration, its immediate predecessor having been literally a house where dwelt the verger and his family. In earlier times, however, there had been some kind of erection here, which was used as a sacristy, and of this traces were found by Gilbert Scott which led to the present restoration. As these traces, however, consisted principally of some fragments of a staircase, the present Early English restoration is only conjectural. On the whole it is tolerable, though the heavy and unnecessary central buttress one may well suppose not to be part of the old design. Why the slope of this buttress, which stands in the middle of the transept, should be so stoutly protected against the weather, it is hard to imagine. The carving on the tympanum over the door that leads into the slype is stiff and repulsive. Just to the right of this door is a holy water stoup, very simply cut into the pillar, which proves that this entrance from the slype was usual in old times, when the monastic buildings lay on that side of the church; at present, however, the door is commonly kept locked. [Illustration: SAXON CLERESTORY WINDOW IN SOUTH TRANSEPT (_from a drawing by J. Park Harrison_).] The chamber above the slype, representing the old sacristy, is now used as a vestry. It is reached from the transept, and a staircase in it leads to the gallery above, whence in all probability a door led straight into the dormitory of the monastery. A similar arrangement to this existed at Bristol, which was also an Augustinian house; and there are traces of a door in the wall of Canon Sanday's house which further substantiate the conjecture. Some direct access to the church from the dormitory was a great convenience in the days when matins was said in the middle of the night. The gallery is now used as a kind of museum for any odd fragments that are discovered in the precincts. Among them is the quaintly carved base of a Norman cross, which before the Reformation stood, together with a pulpit, at the west end of the nave, near the place now occupied by the fountain. The subjects represented are the Fall, Abraham's Sacrifice, the Giving of the Law.