Cylchgronau Cymru

282 EXCAVATIONS AT VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY. (Read at Tenby.) Permission having been given to my friend and neigh¬ bour, Viscount Dungannon, and myself, by the respected owners of Valle Crucis Abbey, to clear away the rubbish within the ruins, operations were commenced early in the present summer, by an excavation at the east end of the choir. Here were discovered the foundations of the high altar, and on the north side of the choir, the base of a platform, on which perhaps stood a tomb. The accu¬ mulation of rubbish in the east aisle of the south transept was then cleared out. This aisle was found to have been divided into two chapels; in that to the south, is the foundation of an altar ; in the other, the base of an Early English altar, of good design. Beneath the broken foundations of the wall, dividing these chapels, was dis¬ covered a human skeleton, in situ, lying with the feet to the east; and amongst the bones were considerable quan¬ tities of decayed nails, probably the fastenings of the coffin. I should mention that this wall was bonded into the arcade at the west, and the wall at the east end of the aisle—some of the earliest parts of the abbey buildings. It would seem therefore that the interment took place before they were erected. One seat of the sedilia was discovered in the wall dividing the choir from the north chapel of the south transept, but their arcade has entirely disappeared. On the opposite side of the choir was found a ruined arcade of five arches, having every appearance of sedilia, but the arches were found to be too narrow to have admitted the officiating priests within them. I will not venture an opinion as to the purpose for which they were intended. The east aisle of the north transept, in its arrangements, was discovered to be nearly the same as that on the south. It is separated by a wall into two chapels. In the south chapel, are the foundations of an altar, and a double piscina of very good " Early English" work, and close to it, an ambry, having an "Early English" arch with good plain mouldings. In the north