Note 36 — THE PORCH
Reading edition
"Above the groining of the porch is a parvise, accessible by a turret-stair, having two Norman window-openings, unglazed, and a straight-gabled niche between them on the outside. In former days this chamber was constantly inhabited by one of the sextons, who acted as a watchman, but since the restoration of the church it has been disused."—Harston's Handbook of Sherborne Abbey.
In the church accounts of St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, A.D. 1488, there is a charge for a "key to clerk's chamber." This no doubt referred to the parvise.