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By C. Hodgson Fowler, F.S.A.

Within a few hundred yards of the line of the outside wall of the once-important Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead, founded in 1139, stands an extremely beautiful chapel of the purest Early English work, the special use of which is not known, but which was probably for the use of pilgrims to the Abbey and was probably served from it.

It now stands solitary and desolate, greatly out of repair, with its north and south walls much out of the perpendicular, and its vaulting consequently twisted and its beautiful lines disturbed.

That the settlement of its walls is not all of recent date is shown by the heavy fifteenth or sixteenth century buttress built against its north wall, but undoubtedly its dilapidation has seriously increased of late years.

The chapel is a simple oblong in plan, measuring inside the walls 43 feet 6 inches in length by 19 feet 6 inches in width, with side walls 2 feet 8 inches, and east and west walls about 3 feet 2 inches thick.

It is divided on plan into three bays by vaulting inside and by buttresses outside; and divided horizontally in two parts by strings running round the building externally and internally. The height from the floor to the inside string is 6 feet, and from the floor to the crown of the vaulting 21 feet.

Both east and west gables have been taken down, and the whole building is now covered by a low-pitched roof hipped at each end, with a poor modern bell-cote of perhaps about the beginning of the eighteenth century.

At the east end is a triplet of unequal lancets, with well-moulded arches internally and double-shafted jambs, the shafts having carved caps and well-moulded bases, the outer shafts also being banded. The centre light is 8 feet 9 inches high and 1 foot 2 inches wide, the side ones being 7 feet high and 9 inches wide.

The exterior of the west end is extremely effective, a richly moulded doorway under the outer string, which is here raised to a height of 11 feet 10 inches, having above it a very well designed composition of three arches, all well moulded, the outer two being blank and the centre one containing a deeply-recessed vesica window about 5 feet 2 inches high and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter.

The two side walls have each six lancets, each about 8 feet high and 9 inches wide, all with shafted jambs internally having carved caps and moulded bases, but plain splayed arches.

Near the west end of the north wall is a second doorway—now walled up—and in the north-west angle a doorway leading into a stair turret.

The vaulting is quadripartite in the centre and western bays, but sexpartite in the eastern one. The ribs spring from carved and moulded corbels, themselves springing from the string round the building. The vaulting ribs are about 9 inches thick, well moulded with a centre and two side rolls and deep hollows between, the transom ribs having the hollows filled with acutely pointed dog-tooth moulding, the diagonal ribs being without it. The springing of these ribs is about 10 inches above the corbels. There is no ridge rib, but there are well-carved bosses at the intersection of the diagonal ribs, the centre and western ones being all foliage, the eastern one foliage, with the Agnus Dei in the centre.

Externally the building is divided into bays by rather flat buttresses of about 1 foot 6 inches projection, running up into a corbel table on the two side walls. The corbels are simply chamfered, and carry an equally simple cornice.

At the north-west angle the two buttresses are of rather greater projection and of considerable width, giving space inside them for the staircase mentioned before.

The west doorway is an excellent example of good Lincolnshire thirteenth-century work, the arches well moulded and enriched with dog-tooth, the jambs having one attached and two detached shafts with well-carved capitals.

The carving of these and all the other capitals in the chapel is of the stiff “celery” stalk foliage so common in Lincolnshire work, and all, equally with the mouldings, refined and evidently the work of high-class masons and carvers.

Internally there are no ancient features beyond those already mentioned, except a very simple triangular-headed piscina in the eastern bay of the south wall. The projecting part of its basin has been broken off, but two grooves for a wooden shelf remain.

The chapel, being a donative without restriction, was used as a Presbyterian chapel from 1720 to 1812, and was then filled up with pews, and a pulpit of Jacobean character, apparently previously in the chapel, was erected in front of the east window.

Most fortunately, however, in thus fitting up the chapel, the joiner incorporated in the pews two pieces of an Early English screen, of an exceedingly interesting description, and which no doubt originally cut off the eastern bay from the body of the chapel. These two pieces are each about 6 feet long, and consist of an open arcade, the upper part of the screen, each having six trefoil-headed openings, the heads being cut out of boards only ⅞ inch thick and rudely pinned on to uprights 2⅞ inches square worked into octagonal shafts 1¾ inch in diameter, with moulded caps and bases. The whole work is somewhat rude in execution, but is an extremely valuable specimen of early woodwork.

The only other object of interest in the chapel is an effigy of Purbeck marble of a knight, now set up against the south wall. This is thought to represent Robert, the second Lord Tattershall, who died c. 1212. He is in a hauberk of banded mail, the earliest of the five known examples, and wears the cylindrical helmet, with convex top, having two bands crossing in front.

For many of these particulars I am indebted to drawings by Mr. J. Nixon and Mr. A. Hartshorne in the Spring Garden Sketch Book.