Bishop Benson's architect (Mr. Kent), proposed to "flute" the columns, but, finding that the pillars consisted of a stone casing filled with rubble, he changed his plans.
The West End of the nave, as also the corresponding portions of the two aisles, was pulled down and reconstructed by Abbot Morewent (1421-1437) in the style known as Perpendicular. It is uncertain whether Morwent's work was built on the same foundation line as the previously existing Norman work. Some have thought that he lengthened the original nave to the extent of one bay. Mr. Hope considers that he curtailed it somewhat, and that the present Deanery building was similarly shortened. Anyone who will take the trouble to space out with a compass the distance between the centres of the piers in the nave on the plan will be inclined to fall in with this suggestion.
Abbot Morwent, according to Leland, intended, "if he had lived, to have made the whole body of the church of like worke." It is a matter for rejoicing that he was not spared to carry out his intentions. His work, though it has been censured, is, as Mr Waller points out, exceedingly good of its kind. Morwent may have found the west end in danger of falling, just as the towers that flanked the Norman west front had collapsed in the twelfth century.
How Morwent would have made the whole body of the church "of like worke" is another matter for speculation. Would he have kept the Norman piers in their present position, and revaulted the roof after the model of his vaulting in the second bay from the west end, or would he have diminished the number of piers so as to give a distance between them equal to the space between the west wall and the first pier he erected? It is difficult to realise how such a herculean task would have been carried out with safety to the fabric.
As to the work demolished by Morwent to make room for his own, it is only possible to hazard the conjecture that the original west front of Gloucester was something like that of the abbey at Tewkesbury, but with the additional finish of two larger western towers. As the two churches were being built almost at the same time, this conjecture seems reasonable.
The South Aisle of the nave was originally of Norman work, similar in style to that of the north aisle; but was remodelled and rebuilt to such an extent by Abbot Thokey, in or about the year 1318, that the piers and portions of the south wall are all that remain of the Norman work. He desired probably to preserve the Norman vaulting (similar to that yet existing in the north aisle of the nave), and as the south wall had inclined outwards, and the whole fabric of the aisle was from this cause in danger, he erected large buttresses to prevent further settlement; but failing in this design, he was compelled to take down the Norman vaulting, and he then substituted vaulting of the same style of architecture as the buttresses he had just erected. Such great care could scarcely have been taken in those days to preserve the Norman piers only; the first object must have been to retain, for economical reasons, as much as could possibly be retained of the old aisle. It may be remarked also that the Norman piers incline in some cases as much as one foot towards the south, and the buttresses of Abbot Thokey also incline in the same direction from three to four inches in their whole height. The Abbot's buttresses, therefore, must have gone out of the perpendicular after their first erection, or else the present vaulting would show settlements, which it certainly does not.
The tracery of the windows is unusual in design, and is similar to that in a window of the chapel at Merton College, Oxford. Ball-flower mouldings adorn the aisle windows inside and out between the south door and the steps leading up to the south transept, and the same ornament is repeated in the vaulting of three of the bays and in the triforium of the choir.[2]
Abbot Morwent's work at the west end of this aisle is similar to that in the north aisle.