=The Vestry.=--The third of the chapels is the most regular in shape,
and is used, as it was in monastic times, as a Vestiarium or vestry.
The arch is closed entirely by masonry, built upon the original wall
which formed the outer wall of the Norman church. In the walled-up
space that corresponds to what is the entrance in the case of the
other chapels are a fine tomb and the doorway into the vestry. A
description of the tomb will be found on p. 97. The tomb of the Abbot
may have been removed from a grave outside the building, but it is not
known who was buried in it. Willis ascribed it to Robert Fortington,
who died in 1253. A fine doorway, richly decorated, with three
elaborately wrought brackets for images over it, gives access to the
Clergy Vestry. The door is of oak, plated with roughly wrought metal
plates, of which tradition has it that they were made by the monks out
of swords and armour found in and around the precincts after the
battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.

This chapel is profusely enriched with ball-flower moulding, both
inside and on the side next the ambulatory. It will be noticed that
the windows are small and placed, for the sake of the security of the
sacristy, high up in the south wall. In the south wall is a piscina,
and close by on the south-east wall must have stood an altar. The
window nearer to this has richer detail than the other two. In the
south-west wall a small recess is formed inside a buttress. This may
have been used as a safe for plate and other valuables in the charge
of the sacristan.

[Illustration: (_H.J.L.J.M._)
THE VESTRY DOOR, SOUTH CHOIR AISLE.]

A special staircase in the north-west corner, entered from the
ambulatory, gives access to the room over the vestry. In this room,
which has a fireplace, the sacristan probably slept. He was able from
the windows on the stairs to see into the Vestiarium or Diaconum
Magnum, and also into the choir. In fact, this view is one of the most
interesting in the church. Two large square modern windows give light
to this room, and a doorway in the east wall communicates with the
space over the vaulting of the ambulatory and chapels. The room had
originally a low timbered roof, as will be seen by the holes once
occupied by the beams.

There are two tombs of interest built into the wall between the vestry
door and the south transept, and space for them has been cut out of
the original Norman solid wall. One is quite plain and simple Ear