To sum up, then, this choir has not the delicate and spiritual beauty of the choirs of Lincoln or Ely. That is never found even in the finest work of Perpendicular architects; but for stateliness and magnificence it has not a rival in England. These qualities may be best appreciated standing midway between the two transepts and in front of the altar. From that point glittering screens of glass and soaring shafts of stone are to be seen on all sides; the whole effect is one of triumphant light and space and colour, not to be surpassed by the splendours even of Moorish or Italian architecture.
To pass to a more detailed description: the original stalls were irretrievably ruined by the fire of 1829. An illustration of one of these stalls from Britton is here given. They appear to have been magnificent examples of Perpendicular woodwork, and their destruction is an irreparable loss. There were twenty of them on each side of the choir and twelve at the west end. The modern stalls erected in the thirties are a simple imitation, better perhaps than original work of the period would have been—better, certainly, than might have been expected—but spirit-less in execution. The modern bishop's throne and pulpit are not even tolerable. They replaced a throne and pulpit erected in 1740, and, like the stalls, destroyed in the fire.
The fine Perpendicular altar screen was also destroyed by the fire. The present screen is a careful and very successful reproduction of it. It has been glazed with very good effect.
The reredos, designed by Street, with reliefs by Tinworth, is made of terra-cotta and wood, and is not successful either in colour or pattern. The carvings represent the first hour of the Crucifixion.
The clerestory windows are Perpendicular in style, and contain five lights. Though the design is not beautiful in itself, like that of the great east window, it makes an admirable frame for glass. There are certain differences in detail between the windows of the eastern bays and those of the western. The windows of the eastern bays are almost transitional. Certainly their Perpendicular character is not fully developed. Thus some of their upper compartments diverge to the left and right, whereas the windows in the choir itself are made up of parallel and vertical divisions. In the eastern windows, also, a transom runs through the upper lights of the windows, which is not found at the western. The tracery of the eastern window is even more filled with transitional characteristics. As a pattern of tracery, it is wanting in coherence and subordination, and these faults are painfully evident outside. But it is so vast, and filled with such magnificent glass, that the tracery seen from the inside seems hardly more important than the leads of the glass, and the whole is to be judged simply as a great wall of glass supported where necessary by stonework made as unobtrusive as possible.
There are differences also in the eastern and western windows of the aisles, especially in the interweaving and subordination of the lines of the mouldings, but these differences are not so obvious as in the clerestory.
The change in the placing of the clerestory window and of the triforium passage has been pointed out.
Among other and minor differences the following may be remarked:—In the eastern bays the capitals of shafts in the triforium run round the shafts of the main arch of the window.