VII.—A Description of the Chapel of Saint Erasmus in Westminster Abbey

Abstract

The chapel of S. John Baptist, the north-western of the four polygonal chapels which surround the apse of Westminster Abbey, differs from the remaining three in that it is now entered, not by a door in the middle of the screen separating it from the ambulatory, but by a kind of vestibule cut through the northern of the two great piers which fill up the spaces between the last of the rectangular and the first of the polygonal chapels. It is to this vestibule that I wish to call attention, and in doing so I shall first desrcibe it in its present condition, and then point out the various changes which it seems to have undergone, and endeavour to draw some conclusions as to its history and the uses to which it has been put.