nt and recumbent effigies in the midst of it. Chantry chapels
enclosed on two of the sides by wooden screen-work are more common.

Although no ancient high altar of stone is known to exist, some of the
ancient chantry altars have been preserved: these are composed either of a
solid mass of masonry, covered with a thick slab or table of stone, as in
the north aisle of Bengeworth Church, near Evesham, and in the south aisle
of Enstone Church, Oxfordshire; or of a thick stone slab or table, with a
cross at each angle and in the centre, supported merely on brackets or
trusses built into and projecting from the wall, as in a chantry chapel in
Warmington Church, Warwickshire; or partly on brackets and partly
sustained on shafts or slender piers, as in a chantry chapel,
Chipping-Norton Church, Oxfordshire. Sometimes a chamber containing a
fire-place was constructed over a chantry, apparently for the residence,
either occasional or permanent, of a priest: such a chamber occurs over
the chantry chapel containing the altar in Chipping-Norton Church; and
such also, with the exception of the flooring, which has decayed or been
removed, may be seen in the chantry chapel which contains the altar in
Warmington Church. In both of these chambers are windows or apertures in
the walls which divide them from the church, through which the priest was
enabled to observe unseen any thing passing within the church.

[Illustration: Chantry Altar, Warmington Church, Warwickshire]

We often find an opening or aperture obliquely disposed, carried through
the thickness of the wall at the north-east angle of the south, and the
south-east angle of the north aisle: this was the _hagioscope_, through
which at high mass the elevation of the host at the high altar, and other
ceremonies, might be viewed from the chantry chapel situate at the east
end of each aisle. In general, these apertures are mere narrow oblong
slits; sometimes, however, they partake of a more ornamental character, as
in a chantry chapel on the south side of Irthlingborough Church,
Northamptonshire, where the head of an aperture of this kind is arched,
cinquefoiled within, and finished above with an embattled moulding. In the
north and south transepts of Minster Lovel Church, Oxfordshire, are
oblique openings, arched-headed and foliated; and in the north aisle of
Chipping-Norton Church, in the same county, is a singular hagioscope,
obliquely disposed, not unlike a square-headed window