[UNDER-1 5 b or c + CROFT sb.2] The crypt of a church; an underground vault or chamber.
In early use app. limited to the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral.
1395. in Legg & Hope, Inventories (1902), 99. Prope altare beate Marie dicte ecclesie Cant. in Criptis que under croft vulgariter nuncupatur.
1601. F. Godwin, Bps. of Eng., 50. The monkes … buried it [the body] immediately in the vndercraft.
1631. Weever, Anc. Funeral Mon., 202. This murdered Bishop was buried first in the vndercroft of the Church. Ibid., 213.
1640. Somner, Antiq. Canterb., 175. Let me now leade you to the Undercroft. A place fit … to keepe in memory the subterraneous Temples of the Primitives in the times of persecution.
1772. S. Denne, Hist. Rochester, 61. From this chapel you descend into the under croft.
1790. Pennant, London, 330. This undercroft, as these sort of buildings were called, had in it several chauntries and monuments.
1839. Civil Eng. & Arch. Jrnl., II. 250/1. The body of the church might be made to stand upon an undercroft.
1865. Morris, Jason, XV. 1021. Now went those maids, groping with outstretched hand Betwixt the pillars of the undercroft.
1869. Freeman, Norm. Conq., III. xiii. 292. A vaulted undercroft supported the hall.
