There has been a considerable controversy about the position of the Lady Chapel founded by Archbishop Thoresby. This controversy, in which Mr Browne has endeavoured to prove that Thoresby's Lady Chapel was placed on the north side of the nave, is far too long and intricate a business to find a place in this book. It is enough to say that the other authorities seem unanimously to be of the opinion that the altar of the Lady Chapel was under the great east window, where an altar, used for Holy Communion, is now placed. Thither, it is said, Thoresby removed the bodies of certain of his predecessors. And the tombs of six of these were existing in the seventeenth century, when drawings were made of them by Torre, the antiquary.
Brasses were placed over the burial-places of these archbishops, and were mostly destroyed in the Civil War.
The great east window, like the windows of the transepts, has a double plane of tracery reaching to about half the height of the whole. Between the two planes a passage runs at the base of the window, between two doors which lead to staircases in the turrets on each side of the windows. These staircases, in their turn, lead to a gallery across the window on the top of the inner plane of tracery. The view from this gallery is very fine. The window itself contains nine lights, and these are divided by two mullions, thicker than the rest, into sub-divisions of three lights each, each sub-division terminating in an arch formed by the curving of the mullions. From the top of each of these arches rises another mullion, the two outer being soon cut short by the arch of the window, the central one curiously splitting into two thick branches to right and left in straight lines until they also are cut short by the window arch. The rest of the upper lights are filled with an infinite number of small divisions, in which the occasional presence of curved lines shows the transitional character of the design. The window is crossed by three transoms, the two lower at equal distances, the upper close to the one below it. The gallery across the window is formed by these two upper transoms. The glass in the choir, as in all the rest of the church, is described in a separate chapter.
The entrance to the crypt is from the north aisle of the choir as it was in ancient days. There are still remains of the original vestibule to the crypt, and also the bases and one of the jambs of the Norman door leading to it.
The Crypt itself is very interesting, not only for its own sake, but for the light it throws on the history of the building of the minster. The fire of 1829 gave Professor Willis and Mr Browne the opportunity to make elaborate and prolonged investigations, to which we owe much of the light which has been thrown upon problems connected with the choirs of Thomas and Roger.
Before this fire, the only crypt whose existence was known of, was a small chamber under the platform of the high altar, no wider than the central aisle of the choir, and only equal to a bay and a half of that aisle in length. The greater part of this crypt was Norman in character. The vault was supported by six Norman pillars, and the ribs of the vault were apparently Norman. But the side piers were Perpendicular, and the transverse arches of the ribs four-centred, as in late Perpendicular work. There can be little doubt, Professor Willis says, that this crypt was a mere piece of patchwork put together, when the present choir was built, out of old materials which came readily to hand, with the object of giving support to the platform of the altar, and to provide chapels and altar room beneath it.
After the fire of 1829, the existence was discovered of a large crypt, stretching westward of the altar platform, and extending under the whole of the rest of the choir and its aisles. Of this crypt, only the pillars and the lower part of the walls remained.