cular apartments they had belonged. The presence of a few geometrical tiles, or rather tesseræ, similar to those with which John de Cancia decorated the abbey church, seems to indicate that he had also bestowed a pavement of this character on the hall and other chief apartments of the house; but none of them were left in situ, unless part of a plain pavement, in a passage near the east end of the refectory, may be referred to so early a period. The rest of the tiles that have been found detached among the rubbish, are either of the Decorated or Perpendicular period, of which latter character is a pavement upwards of thirty feet square at the south end of the great hall. Although no general device or pattern is attempted in its arrangement, besides a plain border or bounding course, respective only of the columns of the building, yet several patterns are introduced promiscuously, that are very interesting.

One pattern of four tiles displays the arms of the abbey (azure), three horse-shoes (or), and the very appropriate inscription used also by Darnton in the Lady Chapel, BENEDICITE FONTES DOMINO. Another, and nearly similar, pattern of Tudor tiles exhibits the same arms, but circumscribed by (SOLI) DEO GLORIA, a motto always used by abbot Huby, and identified with him in the abbey in two instances where the shield has displayed. his initials with the mitre and crosier. There is a pattern also bearing, perhaps heraldically, three feathers without a legend, of which a much better impression was stolen, soon after its discovery, by some prowling collector, from the centre of the dais in the refectory. From the inferior manufacture, however, of the tiles used in the hall, I am inclined to suppose that they were such only as were rejected in some work which may hereafter be discovered in the abbey.

On this interesting part of the subject, time will not allow me to say more than that, on several of the tiles, the device has been merely stamped or impressed, and consequently not represented by a different coloured clay. Of this kind were the Tudor tiles with which the refectory has, apparently, been entirely paved, and the floor of the great hall repaired. The patterna rose, in a lozengy compartment, occurs in tiles of two different sizes, and, in the smaller form, has been also found at Sawley Abbey in Craven, and in the Solar at Markenfield Hall, near Ripon; though it is more than probable, that in one case the design, and, in the other, the tiles, were supplied from the kiln at Fountains. I must remark also, that I observed pounded brick in the mortar used here by the Early English builders,

and 'that I found in the rubbish of a chimney of that date, several moulded bricks incrusted with soot and charred by fire, of a shape exactly similar to that found four years ago in the wall of Danebury church in Essex, and supposed, in the seventeenth number of the "Journal of the Archæological Institute," where a sketch of it is given, to be applicable to the formation of a chimney shaft. Some plain bricks occasionally turned up, in the Perpendicular work, 13 inches long, 2 inches thick, and varying from 4 to 5 inches in width. There are also fragments of large square flat roofing tiles, about half an inch thick, which served, when entire, for covering the inferior offices of the house, or, when broken, for levelling irregular courses of the walls. I have not been able to procure a perfect specimen, though it is tolerably evident that they were upwards of fifteen inches square, and were supported, not only by the knob or projection on the under side, but also by a wooden peg that passed through a hole on each side of it, and attached it to the woodwork of the roof. It is unnecessary to inquire how early these tiles were employed, for I have observed several of precisely similar form and substance inserted in Norman walls of the abbey, as early as the time of its foundation.

With a trifling exception, the whole of the abbot's house had been explored in the spring of 1850. The extraordinary interest which the discovery had excited, not only among all classes of visitors that had thronged daily to the spot, but among antiquaries generally, was, however, now rather raised than abated; since it was found, on clearing the west end of the great passage from the abbey, that it was connected with some buildings of the transition Norman period, buried in rubbish about seven feet deep. As these were evidently apartments that had hitherto been wanting to complete the plan of the domestic offices of the abbey, it was determined when the works were resumed in the subsequent winter, that the whole space between the abbot's house and the cloister on the west, and the river and the chapter-house on the north, should be reduced to the proper level. The work had not proceeded many yards before it was evident that the bank along the south end of the refectory was but an accumulation of rubbish; and that the river had not only washed its walls, but, when swollen by floods, had flowed down a tunnel parallel with it, and constructed under the apartment to prevent inundation. intervening pier, or foundation, is an example of a mediæval water-wall, worthy of particular observation; but from motives of unnecessary caution, the stream was not suffered to regain

The

its ancient course, which, in the plan now exhibited, is indicated by dotted lines, as if in the condition of sand or debris, which it most probably had assumed before the dissolution of the house. On advancing towards the kitchen, the ruin of a rude pier, or pillar, by the side of the water, and parallel with the east wall of the refectory, apparently showed that a wooden bridge had crossed the river here, and that the path had passed along the east side of the refectory to the kitchen, under a pent-house of which the corbels that supported the roof still remain in the wall. After clearing out the foundation of an apartment that had been vaulted, and subsidiary to the kitchen, probably as a larder or dairy, we found that the frater-house had been curtailed of thirty feet at its southern and ruined extremity, by a wall erected by Mr. Aislabie, and that, therefore, its proper dimensions are 104ft. by 29ft., instead of those erroneously represented in the modern plans. From this newly cleared part we found entrance to another apartment, 59ft. by 18ft., leading eastward, that no doubt had been the cellar, though there is no trace of the pillars of the vaulting noted in Burton's plan, and only of openings northward, that have been walled up. Again, from its east end, we entered another place, 30ft. by 18ft., that had as certainly been the brew-house; for in addition to the evidence of its position and its two large archways towards the river, there are not only strong marks of fire against the thick partition wall between it and the cellar, but in Dr. Burton's plan, taken before the upper part of it was demolished, a semicircular recess is represented on this side, such as would have been required for fixing the boiler. This wall, however, appears only to have been the work of Huby.

Along the south side of these apartments, the river has been admitted into a walled course that passed under, and was included within them, for the purpose of refrigeration, and also served as a drain for the frater-house, which had an opening into it at the upper end. The wall towards the river has been partly supported on arches; but at some time, and perhaps not long before the dissolution, the foundation appears to have been so unsettled at the east end, as to have demanded the closure of two of them, together with the openings from the brew-house, and the erection of huge buttresses and piers to resist further dilapidation. The inner wall, too, was then strengthened.

On removing the earth under the arch at the eastern extremity of this watercourse, the long protracted expectation of the workmen for hidden treasure, in any and every shape that the most

romantic imagination could devise, was suddenly gratified by the discovery of a hoard of silver money, consisting of 354 pieces, generally in excellent preservation, ranging in date from the reign of Philip and Mary to that of Charles I., a few of the earlier and well-clipped pieces being Spanish coin. They were laid, without any apparent envelope, at the depth only of a foot, and were doubtless committed to this particular place by some thrifty inhabitant of the adjacent country, who had been slain suddenly during the great rebellion; for it was easy to have been identified, even at night, by any one who shared the secret.

On excavating the north side of the cellar, it was found to have been, with the intervention perhaps of another yard to which the windows had originally opened, the boundary of the base-court, of which the frater-house formed the west, and the chapter-house the north side. The greatest part of the east side was occupied by coeval buildings, corresponding in width with the length of the brew-house; but, in Huby's time, the two lower apartments have been converted, longitudinally, into a double range, of which it is now, in the absence of all particular evidence, impossible to say more than that the apartments which looked towards the river were domestic offices; for the smaller communicated on one side with the brew-house, and on the other with an apartment of which the original Norman doorway opened, eventually, into the abbot's coal-yard. The use of the three apartments towards the base-court is singularly evident. They were the prisons of the convent. These favourite localities of novelists were used for the punishment of such monks as had been found guilty of felony or other heinous crime, and in this instance also may have been required by the secular jurisdiction which the abbot enjoyed within the "Liberty of St. Mary of Fountains." They were all approached only from the space or yard on the north side of the cellar, and by the entrance to the first and largest cell, which having been therefore used, probably, for the mildest form of punishment, had the convenience of a window; which, though we found it closed, had enabled some unfortunate captive, in whom solitude had recalled reflection, to trace, even perhaps when chained to the iron now wrenched from below, a Latin inscription, in black letter, not less than twelve feet long, of which, however, little more can now be deciphered than the characteristic and pathetic VALE. The other cells had been intended for the infliction of severer discipline, from the absence of light, and the presence of a convenience, which added only to the offensive character of the place. Both

have traces of iron in the wall, but a formidable staple, in the floor of the innermost, tells significantly that it was reserved för the most heinous or incorrigible offenders. More than once I have perceived evidence of an intention to aggravate the horrors of medieval dungeons, and I was not surprised to find here that the great drain from the Base Court had been carried under this place; though I was, to find the stench so intolerable as to require quicklime to be thrown into it before it could be cleared out.

After the erection of the abbot's house, the passage to it from the abbey intervened between this range of buildings and the chapter-house; though no doubt, the space had been previously occupied by a similar communication.

In the northern face of these buildings, a perpendicular groove has been cut in the outer surface of the wall, sufficient to admit a pipe of three inches bore that has passed through into the room with the Norman doorway. If this was intended to convey water from the roof to a tank or cistern, it may be, perhaps, the

earliest instance of a vertical conductor that has been observed.

The whole of the newly-discovered offices of the abbey are of the transition Norman period, with the exception of the prisons. As their elevation seldom exceeds five or six feet, it is of course impossible to say to what extent they may have been altered or repaired, particularly in the upper stories; but from the heads of windows, and such like fragmentary indications found within, it appears that considerable changes have occurred in the Tudor period, and from the presence of stones bearing the well-known initials M. H., that they were instituted by that indefatigable builder and able ruler of the house-Marmaduke Huby. These operations, however, with the exception of the prisons and the abutments against the river, seem to have been required only in the upper stories, for the use of which he introduced a winding staircase, near the doorway from the cellar to the brew-house, and another at the northern extremity of the eastern range adjoining the abbot's coal-yard.

On examining these offices, it is necessary that a visitor should be informed that several beautiful fragments of Early English work dispersed in them, were found among rubbish brought here from another part of the abbey by Mr. Aislabie; a circumstance the more to be regretted, since, on the conclusion of this part of the excavation, they were mingled with other wrought stones that had formed part of the superstructure, and in some degree illustrated it by their position, and were, unwarrantably, used by the workmen to decorate the walls, after the puerile fashion of a suburban tea garden.