The altar consists of a slab of grey Barnack-stone, with Purbeck inlaid, the whole being supported on shafts.
The tomb of Sir Thomas Wyndham, now in the north of nave, at one time stood here, as also the pelican lectern now in the choir.
In Britton, the chapel is shown divided off from the aisle by a stone screen of Perpendicular character; this was removed, and used to form in part the present screens dividing the ante-choir from the aisles.
A room over the Jesus Chapel, once the plumbery, is now used as a museum.
The Entrance which led to the Lady Chapel is immediately behind the apse, and takes the form of a double arch with clustered columns to the jambs and central pier; the archivolt is deeply moulded and enriched with the typical Early English "dog-tooth" ornament. In the spandrel over the pier, and between the archivolts, is a quatrefoiled opening fitting just under the line of the semi-circular Norman vault. The arches, walled-in up to the impost level, are now filled with glass, as well as the opening. The original circular Norman Lady Chapel was destroyed in part by the fire of 1169; it was repaired by Bishop De Turbe (1146-74), but it was not until the time of Walter de Suffield (1245-57) that it was decided to pull it down and rebuild a chapel in the style of the period—viz. Early English; it was this later building that Dean Gardiner (1573-89) destroyed.
Dean Goulburn, in his work on the cathedral, points out that it was the cultus of the Blessed Virgin, which gathered strength all over Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that led to the erection of such sumptuous chapels as this thirteenth-century Lady Chapel of Norwich must have been. When the theological reaction followed, they fell into disuse and neglect, and their final ruin followed when it was found cheaper to pull them down than keep them in repair.
The beautiful proportion of the entrance arches still remaining, the archivolt enriched with the "dog-tooth" moulding—the only example of this particular ornament at Norwich—gives one an idea of what the chapel may have been like. During the recent works of reparation in the choir, pieces of stone were found with the "dog-tooth" built inwards: evidently the stone from the pulled down chapel had been used by the masons for the repair of the fabric.
St. Luke's Chapel, on the south side of the apse corresponding with the Jesus Chapel on the north, was formerly the chapel of the prior. It is now used as the parish church of St. Mary in the Marsh. It has been much restored, and the Decorated windows shown in Britton's view of the east end of the cathedral were replaced early in the sixties, by what the restorer would no doubt have called Norman.