The south aisle is, in fact, of two periods : the eastern part, of the fourteenth century, was built first as a separate chapel. The western is of the Perpendicular period.]
Here we discover the ornamented niches and the pointed arch windows. The six arches which divide it from the nave are pointed; the two western arches are quite plain and very sharp; the pillars that support them are round, massive and clumsy (Norman). The four eastern are higher and less pointed, having round capitals ornamented with mouldings ; the pillars sustaining them are more slender (Perpendicular). The windows in this aisle are large and handsome ; they are divided into compartments by stone mullions, but all are dissimilar in their tracery.
“ In the south wall near the middle of the aisle is a niche ornamented with sculpture, supposed to have belonged to some ancient monument of an abbot, but no particulars relative to it are now extant. [It is apparently for an image of a saint, and has been called the * Bishop’s Throne.’ The present carving is largely of 1850.] The table of the recess in the wall is covered with a Stone 7 feet 6 inches long which appears to have had some figure let into it, but the form of the outline cannot be distinguished. The length of the church within the walls is 104 feet 6 inches ; its breadth 67 feet 6 inches.”
The chancel fell in 1592.
“In that part now employed as the chancel is a rude ancient seat generally called the ‘ Bishop’s Chair ’ [probably this is correct, and the Statement above about the niche, from a more modern source, is a mistake]. Its height is about three feet. Beneath the seat is carved the figure of a hunter with game on his shoulder and accompanied by dogs. [This is probably of the fourteenth century, and may represent St. Hubert.] The chair is now placed on part of a tesselated (tile) pavement found about 50 yards [read feet] from the present east window. . . . Nearly ten feet eaSt of it was the foundation of a wall which from its thickness and materials seems to have been the original extent of the building.” The present eaSt window is a very fine Perpendicular one, moSt likely transferred from the original eaSt end.
The laSt restoration of the church was carried out in 1888-94.
The following note of Leland muSt refer to the destroyed choir : “ Besyde the hie altare on the ryght hand ys a tumbe with the image of a bishop, and over the tumbe a XI bishops painted with their names, and verses, as token of so many bishops buried ther, or that ther had bene so many bishops of Cornwall that had theyr seete ther.”
The priory buildings were on the north side, and what remains of them is incorporated in the house of Port Eliot, of which the dining-room is said to occupy the site of the frater. The frater seems to have been Standing in Browne Willis’s days, early in the eighteenth century, and also another hall with an oriel and dais was remembered and described to him, perhaps the Prior’s hall; it seems to have had the arms of the laSt Prior in the window. Some ancient paintings on panel (fir. 1500) are or were in the house “ known to have belonged to the Priory.” They represented the Life of Christ.