[Illustration: FIG. 629.--Lindores Abbey. Jamb of South Doorway of Nave.] As already mentioned, the vaulting of the slype (Fig. 630) is fairly well preserved. It consisted of two square bays, and had plain splayed groins springing from corbels, which have all a decidedly first pointed character. The doorway next the cloister had a pair of nook shafts, and the east doorway was plain. A stone bench runs along both sides of the slype. The chapter house has had a stone bench running round the walls, and an arcade all round rested upon it. The shafts and bases can still be traced. The straight staircase to the south of the chapter house no doubt led to the dormitory, which would extend over the fratry to the south as well as the chapter house, A room over the slype may have been the scriptorium or library. The night passage of the monks to the church evidently passed through that apartment, as the stair was in the south-west angle of the transept, and could only be reached in that way. [Illustration: FIG. 630.--Lindores Abbey. Interior of Slype.] [Illustration: FIG. 631.--Lindores Abbey. Broken Figure lying against West End.] Fig. 631 shows a portion of the carved effigy of a monument which is preserved amongst the ruins. CAMBUSKENNETH ABBEY, STIRLINGSHIRE. The ruins of this abbey stand on the banks of the Forth, about a mile eastward from Stirling. The buildings are almost completely ruined, the detached tower at the west being almost the only part which remains in anything like a complete state. The plan of the church and the abbey buildings can only be conjectured from grass-grown foundations, with here and there a base course of dressed stone. The west doorway, however, although in a very mutilated condition, is nearly entire, as also is a portion of a gable wall and side walls at the extreme south-east corner of the buildings. All else is in the most fragmentary condition. The ground on which the church and cloister were erected is level, but to the east it slopes downward to the river, as indicated on the Plan (Fig. 632). [Illustration: FIG. 632.--Cambuskenneth Abbey. Plan.] Till 1864 the whole site was covered with grassy mounds of earth, which indicated where buildings had formerly stood. In that year excavations were made, an account of which, together with a plan of the site by Mr. Mackison, architect, Stirling, was published.[80]