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The stair to nowhere, and the beam socket above the chancel arch.
Also known as: Doorway high up in a church wall, Stairs that go nowhere in a church
Most English churches carry the negative evidence of a structure that is gone: a doorway high in a wall, a blocked stair, a row of sockets. The screen and cross they served were removed at the Reformation, and the holes are what remain.
One of the clearest cases in a church of reading a structure by its absence. A blocked doorway three metres up a wall is not a puzzle once the missing loft is supplied.
Removal was ordered rather than incidental, so the loss is datable and part of the building's documented history rather than decay.
England and Wales · from the mid-sixteenth century
A small blocked doorway set high in the wall beside a chancel arch, sometimes with a narrow stair behind it, and a row of square sockets across the arch below.