Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/105

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE.
85

five roses, with their stalks and leaves, cut in high relief, and still very perfect:

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these roses were evidently coloured red upon their outer leaves, their enclosed centres being white; and indeed there is a strong probability that the entire flowers were originally coloured white, the red portions appearing to have been laid over the white. This is a very curious circumstance, as the chapel was probably the work of abbot Wallingford, who succeeded to the abbacy in the year 1476, and died very shortly after the battle of Bosworth-field, having presided over this monastery from the commencement to the close of the Yorkist ascendency. An engraving of these remains, coloured exactly after the original stonework, will very shortly be published by the St. Alban's Architectural Society.

We most readily avail ourselves of the opportunity afforded by Mr. Boutell's interesting communication, to supply an accidental omission in the eighth number of the Archaeological Journal, and to acknowledge the friendly disposition exhibited towards the Institute by the recently formed Architectural Society of St. Alban's. To their liberality we were indebted for the loan of the admirable wood engraving of the fresco representing the incredulity of St. Thomas, recently discovered in the abbey church, presented to our members in that number of the Journal. The Committee of the Institute regard with much satisfaction the recent formation of this and similar local associations, for the praiseworthy object of preserving and elucidating antiquarian remains, and their satisfaction is greatly increased by the consideration that these societies, and first among them the Architectural Society of St. Alban's, have manifested the most kindly feeling towards the Institute, and volunteered their most cordial co-operation in promoting its views. The first anniversary of the St. Alban's Society will occur on June 17, and, being held in a place so replete with interest to the lover of Medieval Architecture, an agreeable and instructive meeting may be expected under the Earl of Verulam's presidency.

Mr. W. S. Walford communicated a letter from the Rev. C. Boys, of Wing, on the remains of coped coffin-lids on the churchyard walls of Lyddington in Rutlandshire, and Castor in Northamptonshire, As we shall recur to this subject at a future time, it will be sufficient to observe at present, that Mr. Boys found the remains of seventeen coped slabs at Lyddington, on which ornament could be distinctly traced, and two at Castor, Mr. Boys forwarded sketches of two of the coped lids at Lyddington, One of these was sculptured with an elaborate cross-flory; the other presented an example of that peculiar style of monumental effigy which occurs during the fourteenth century: a trefoiled