The arrangement of the cathedral should be compared with that of St. Alban’s. It consists of (1) nave, (2) choir, (3) presbytery or sanctuary, (4) feretory or saints’ chapel, (5) retro-choir, (6) Lady chapel.
In the North Transept we are in presence of the earliest work in the cathedral. Much of it is the work of Bishop Walkelin (1070 to 1097); and, with the exception of some traceried windows inserted early in the fourteenth century to give more light to the eastern altars, it remains much as he left it. As his work is in the transepts, so once was the whole cathedral. As finished before the close of the eleventh century, Winchester, in vastness of scale and stern power, must have been one of the most impressive cathedrals of England: more overwhelming than Ely or Peterborough; not inferior even to Durham. I am not sure that every change and transformation that took place at Winchester between the eleventh and the sixteenth century was not a change for the worse. For of the earliest temples of our race, torn as it were out of the solid rock, Walkelin’s cathedral was the most awful and the most religious. As it is one of the earliest, so it was, artistically, the grandest of our Romanesque cathedrals. The south transept of Hereford and the north transept of Chester are, in comparison, humble indeed. In colossal scale it finds one rival only—the mighty church of St. Alban. Artistically, they are miles apart: as far apart as two designs can be, one conditioned by the use of stone, the other of brick.
NORTH TRANSEPT.
But not all the work of the Winchester transepts is by Walkelin; it is Norman, but part of it is a rebuilding rendered necessary by the fall of the central tower in 1107. The original work is readily distinguished. Those parts of the transept which are the nearest to the central tower have fine-jointed masonry; the vaulting of the aisles has ribs; the piers are larger. The further and earlier part of the masonry is much ruder, and the joints wider; the vaulting is without ribs, and the piers are smaller. In both parts the arches are square-edged, greatly adding to the peculiar severity of the aspect of this part of the church. The pier-arches are raised on stilts in order to get their crowns on a level with the intersection of the diagonal groins or ribs; for the earlier vault-builders imagined that all the arches of a vault must rise to the same level. The cushion or cubical capitals are of a simple type, little subdivided. Both transepts have double aisles. Lanfranc, in his metropolitan cathedral at Canterbury, was content with an aisleless transept; but Winchester cathedral was built on a scale befitting the capital of the Norman realms. At either end, too, of the transepts is an aisle—i.e. to the north and south; this unusual feature enabled processions to pass uninterruptedly round the triforium. We hear that in 1111, the bishop having sorely taxed the monastery to provide funds for the rebuilding of the central tower, “the monks reversed their crosses, head down, feet up, and made procession barefoot against the sun, contrary to ecclesiastical use,” round the broad triforium. Ely once had similar end-aisles, and still has both eastern and western aisles to the transepts.
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The Crypt.—From the north transept one descends to the crypt, which is well worth a visit, when not under water. The level of the river seems to have risen since the eleventh century, causing the crypt to be frequently flooded. It extends to the extreme east end of the present cathedral, and is in three parts. The first part, the western, consists of the substructure of the original choir, showing that it consisted of four aisled bays and an apse with ambulatory. Secondly comes a very remarkable feature, of the same date—viz., a long aisleless chapel of three bays, also apsidal, beneath the present retro-choir. Whether the chapel above it was a Lady chapel is a matter of uncertainty; for Lady chapels do not seem to have come into fashion till the thirteenth century. Thirdly, to the extreme east, comes the substructure of Courtenay’s Lady chapel, built between 1486 and 1492. Most interesting of all is the sacred well, immediately beneath the high altar; far older than Norman crypt or Norman cathedral; the holy central spot of by-gone Saxon and even British minsters.
South Transept.—Crossing the choir, we pass down a flight of steps to the south transept. At the top of these steps are the bolt-holes of the iron gates, which are now placed in the north-west corner of the nave, but which once stood here as a barrier to the pilgrims, who were allowed access to the north transept and choir aisles, but not to the choir itself, or to the south transept. They entered the cathedral by a doorway which may still be seen from the outside at the south-east corner of the north transept. In the south transept the same two periods of Norman work are recognisable which we saw in the north transept; but the three aisles have been shut off by walls and screens, forming chapels on the east side, and a chapter-room and treasury on the west.
