The Nave is wider than it is long. With its double aisles it measures 114 feet; its length is only 85 feet. The choir is about the same proportion. The Lady-Chapel, at the extreme east, is very small. The sides of the nave and choir are still further extended by chapels, partitioned off by screens. On the south side of the nave we have first St. George’s Chapel (founded in 1508) and St. Nicholas’s Chapel (founded in 1186, before the present church was built); and on the north side the space once occupied by the Holy Trinity Chapel (1498) and St. James’s Chapel (1507).
“This church differs from most of our cathedral and abbey churches in having no triforium.[8] And the clerestory is not lofty, so that the church is rather low for its width, though the height of the arches of the main arcade prevents this being felt. The roofs of the aisles are all modern, but that of the nave, though extensively repaired, has much of the original work in it, and, with the exception of a few bosses, the choir roof is old. All the roofs are of timber; in the nave the intersections of the main beams are covered by beautiful bosses carved out of the solid wood. On either side, at the points from which the main cross beams spring, is a series of angelic figures splendidly carved in wood: those on the south side playing stringed instruments, those on the north side wind instruments.
“The pillars of the main arcade of the nave are modern work built in imitation of the original ones. They are light and graceful, and, like many other pillars of fifteenth century date, are formed of shafts of which only half have separate capitals, the other mouldings running round the arch. The spaces between the arches are elaborately carved with heraldic shields.”—(T. P.)
In the nave we find the one interesting window in the Cathedral (the most eastern one in the Ducie Chapel), a memorial to General Gordon killed at Khartoum in 1888. It consists of five lights. Gordon is in the centre, his hand on the head of a native boy. Natives and angels occupy the other lights.
Towards the east end of the nave stands the
Manchester: South
