It was not till 1888 that the plaster was removed from the walls, and these arches exposed to view. It was then obvious that they had been part of a permanent church, and not merely temporary doorways for the convenience of Norman masons. Rough as they seem, to the expert they bear marks of care and repair, of having been, in fact, preserved as a specially venerated part of the church. As an instance of this, Mr. Park Harrison points out that one of the supporting stones is quite two feet long (longer than any other in the cathedral), and has Norman tooling upon it. It can scarcely be doubted, he says, that this was introduced to support the springing-stones of the arch, for there are clear signs that there had been some settlement. The head of the archways, too, had been plastered. In both archways there is an impost (a projection, that is, from which the arch springs), and this impost is continued through the thickness of the wall. It will be noticed that the jambs of these arches go more than two feet below the level of the floor, which is another sign of their early date. Within the apse that was reached through the southernmost archway lay the body of St. Frideswide in its first resting-place, and for long this part seems to have been held in special veneration, until the first translation in 1180, when the relics of "The Lady" were moved into a more noted place in the church, and this apse doubtless abandoned like the other two. Somewhere here the relics were then placed (as they lie to-day in the ground beneath this chapel), but the first monument has been lost. Of the second monument, which also was lost but is found again, it is now the place to speak. But, first, it may be well to explain that what is usually called the shrine of St. Frideswide is really the marble monument, or base, upon which the shrine itself formerly rested. In the Middle Ages, relics (with the two English exceptions of Westminster and St. Albans) were preserved in a shrine, usually of metal, which was enclosed in a coffer or _feretrum_.