Norwich: Choir
The Presbytery is the earliest part of the cathedral. It consists of four compartments, or bays, and terminates in a semicircular apse of five compartments. We find here Perpendicular arches, a lofty Norman triforium, and clerestory windows of the transitional period from Decorated to Perpendicular. The whole effect is Norman and noble. Unfortunately the old glass of the windows has perished.
The aisles of the presbytery are also called the Processional Path, and consist of four bays, and five around the apse. A door in the north aisle opens into the gardens of the Bishop’s Palace; and in this aisle, at the fourth bay east of the tower, there is a very peculiar bridge-chapel that spans the aisle. Critics say that it formed the ante-chapel to the reliquary chapel projecting northward from the outer wall of the Cathedral, and that it was probably built as a bridge for exhibiting relics as the processions passed along underneath.
On the south side of the presbytery (third bay) is the Chapel of St. Mary the Less, or Bauchon Chapel (Fourteenth Century). It projects beyond the wall. The vault is Fifteenth Century, and the bosses represent the Life, Death and Assumption of the Virgin. This is now the Consistory Court.
The north transept is without aisles or triforium. Arcading decorates the wall up to the clerestory. Above is a lierne vault of later date, of course, than the transept. The old apsidal chapel on the east (dedicated to St. Anne) is now used as a storeroom.
A staircase in the east wall of the north transept leads to the tower-galleries and walks, very interesting in themselves and affording glimpses through their openings into the nave, presbytery and transepts below.
Between the south aisle of the presbytery and the south transept a beautiful screen of late Perpendicular tracery fills the Norman arch. The roof, like that of the north transept, originally of wood, was destroyed by fire in 1509, and a new vault added in Perpendicular times.
Of the three chapels grouped around the presbytery the Jesus Chapel on the north and the chapel on the south, St. Luke’s, remain. The Lady-Chapel, at the extreme east, has perished.