the corresponding
window on the north side, under a gabled parapet. The pitch of the roof
of the south transept is much higher than that of the north transept,
and the upper part of the transept does not abut against the walls of
the church. Two tiers of corbel brackets on the south wall, and traces
of two Norman windows seem to indicate that here, as elsewhere, a slype,
with a room above it, intervened between the south end of the transept
and the chapter-house. This slype was generally a passage connecting the
cloister garth with the smaller garth to the south of the choir which
was often used as a burying-place for the abbots or priors, as the case
may be, and was the place where the monks or canons interviewed visitors
and chapmen. The room above was often used as the library. The south of
the #Nave# is decidedly inferior in interest to the north. The cloisters
have entirely disappeared, but a series of round-headed arches, formed
of stucco, may conceal a stone arcading similar to that hidden by the
Early English facing of the north wall. The small round-headed windows
giving light to the triforium are more regularly arranged than on the
north side; there is one, and only one, in each division between the
buttresses. There were, as usual, two doors in this wall: one for the
canons, in the wall opposite to the west of the cloister, one close to
the transept for the prior; both are now blocked up. The prior's door,
in the injunction of Langton, 1498, is directed to be kept locked, save
when on festivals a procession passed through it. This doorway is of
early thirteenth-century work; it is round-headed, and is French in
character. There is a legend that a party of French monks, terrified
by a dragon which rose out of the sea, possibly an ancestor of the
sea-serpent of more modern days, put in to Christchurch haven, and were
entertained by the canons, with whom they abode for many years; possibly
this door may be of their workmanship or design. In the south wall a
large aumbry or cupboard, in the thickness of the walls, may be seen;
in this possibly the canons kept the books that they had brought from
the library for study. What the windows in this aisle were we cannot
say--originally, no doubt, Norman, for the westernmost window is still
of this style; but the others, which were widened either in Early
English or Decorated times, are now all filled with nineteenth-century
tracery of Decorated type. The buttresses betwee