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     Archaeologia Cantiana -  Vol. 93  1977  page 41

Excavations on the Site of Leeds Priory.  Part  I  - THE CHURCH  By P. J. Tester, F.S.A.  continued

no. 4). They were situated at intervals coinciding with the buttresses of the north aisle, and they appear to have been partly connected with a rich and elaborate mural arcade, collapsed portions of which were found among destruction debris in the cloister. Plate VB shows a reconstruction of one of its heavily moulded and cusped arches with a marble capital which may well have belonged to one of the smaller intermediate clustered shafts supporting the arcade.3  By calculation it appears that there were three of these arches to each of the bays defined by the larger bases. Those bases were, however, plainly intended to support more than this arcade and may indicate an intention to vault the north walk of the cloister. Whether this was ever carried out is doubtful as no sections of vaulting ribs occurred in the destruction debris.
   Details of the mural arcade provide important dating evidence for the reconstruction of the nave itself. There can be little doubt that it was an integral part of the rebuilt south wall and was provided to enhance the dignity of the cloister bench on which the canons sat at times of study and meditation. Remains of the marble bench survived bedded into the wall along its entire length, and it is probable that the bases of the intermediate shafts of the arcade rested upon it. Examination of the voussoirs of the arches revealed clear evidence of their having formed a blind arcade, and they were certainly not related to the arcade of the

cloister opening towards the garth. Their most striking feature is the occurrence of 'split cusps' - a motif employed in window tracery and elsewhere in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth Lenturies. A close parallel to the Leeds cusps occurs in the chancel windows of Chartham church, seventeen miles to the east, which is known on documentary evidence to have been in course of construction in 1294, and the fashion does not appear to have extended much beyond the first quarter of the fourteenth century.
   Two aumbries were situated in the south face of the aisle wall open towards the cloister; one close to the transept (Plate VA) and the other in the central bay, both no doubt intended to contain books for the use of the canons. Internally, they bore traces of plaster and their cills were of marble, rebated for the door.
In the two eastern bays, at the foot of the aisle wall and below the cloister bench, were four shallow recesses, one of which is shown in Plate VA, containing human bones. No complete skeleton was represented, and the remains included part of the thin skull of a very young infant. Probably these bones came from burials disturbed in rebuilding and were carefully re-interred in specially prepared recesses at the base of the wall.
   3 I am indebted to our Member, Mr A. Daniels, for this reconstruction.

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