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Context Description:
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The chapel was of late date. To make accommodation for it the south corner of No. 14 had to be sacrificed, but instead of following Bazaar Alley to what was presumably the original street angle the builders had thrown forward the facade so as to secure additional space. Even so the building was very small. The chapel faced on a small open space and commanded a view down Paternoster Row (P1. 19b); it lay high and a flight of brick steps led up to a threshold 0.65 m. above street level, and this was shown to be its original height by the fact that the jambs of the door-opening did not go down below the threshold whereas in most of the neighbouring houses the door openings went down well below street level although added thresholds may have raised that opening by 0.50 m. or even by 1.00 m.; alongside the chapel a similar flight of steps led from Paternoster Row to Bazaar Alley, the level of which was the same as that of the chapel pavement. The chapel then was built at a time when the street level was that shown in our photograph, a level acquired only after most of the houses bordering the street had been standing for some while; it stood so high above the street that no reconstruction to meet a rise in level was necessary during the lifetime of the quarter; this height was obtained by the demolition of the south part of No. 14, and the chapel walls were newly built ad hoc, the burnt brick in them rising nine and on the SE side twelve courses above that in the older house walls.1
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