The main gallery of the Chain Gate is shut off by a door which, if it were kept open, would make the prospect even more beautiful than it is. Two corbels which support the vaulting-shafts of the lower staircase should be noticed; they both represent figures thrusting their staves into the mouth of a dragon, but that on the east (wearing a hood and a leathern girdle round his surcoat) is as vigorous in action as the figure on the west side is feeble. A small barred opening in the top of the east wall lights a curious little chamber, which is reached from the staircase that leads to the roof.
The Chapter-House is entered by a double-arched doorway, the small vault between the arches having an odd boss composed of four bearded heads. There are marks in the wall which lead one to think that the doors were hung in a wooden screen under this vault. The old doors are now used in the house of the Principal of the College, where they were identified by Canon Church. They have little slits in them, through which those in the chapter-house could speak with those without, who no doubt waited for admittance on the stepped stone bench of the staircase. Grooves in the two inner shafts of the doorway seem to have been made for the insertion of some light screen, by which the entrance was divided into two passages for ingress and egress. The absence of doors certainly adds to the rather cold unfurnished appearance of the chapter-house in its present condition.
The room itself ("a glorious development of window and vault" it has been called) is one of the best examples of that type of chapter-house which belongs mainly to the thirteenth century, and is a peculiar glory of English architecture. Of octagonal plan, its vaulting ribs branch out from sixteen Purbeck shafts which cluster round the central pillar, typifying the diocesan church with all its members gathered round its common father, the bishop. Each of the eight sides of the room is occupied by a window of four lights, with graceful tracery of an advanced geometrical type. These windows, which are among the finest examples of the period, have no shafts, but their arch mouldings are enriched with a continuous series of the ball-flower ornament. Most of the old glass, in which ruby and white are the predominant colours, remains in the upper lights.
Under the windows runs an arcade which forms fifty-one stalls, separated into groups of seven by the blue lias vaulting-shafts at the angles, but in the side which is occupied by the doorway there are only two stalls, one on either side of the entrance. Two rows of stone benches are under the stalls, and there is a bench of Purbeck round the base of the central pier. The arcade strikes one as too shallow: its canopies, which rest on blue lias shafts, are ornamented with feathering, crockets, finials, and an interesting series of small heads. Some of the heads wear crowns, mitres, hoods, and square caps; others are grotesque, though I cannot detect the "jesters" to which some writers refer. Some of the heads have the same formal twist in the hair as those of the large corbels in the nave (p. [81]). The heads on the side opposite the door are all (with the exception of one modern head in plaster) covered with the early form of papal tiara, a conical hat with a crown round its rim. On this side, in the middle stall, is the bishop's seat, and here are traces of colour; the little heads are still pretty with pink cheeks and painted eyes and hair, and above the canopy the saltire of St. Andrew is discernible.
Thus the bishop still retained, at least in theory, the head-ship of the chapter. The dean sat on one side of him, the precentor on the other, and the rest in due order from the archdeacons and officers down to those in minor orders. Even the boys of the school were admitted to part of the meetings, and they stood on the floor round a desk which was in front of the chief pastor. "There every morning," says Canon Church (Chapters in Hist, of Wells, p. 333), "after the prayers of the third hour and the morning mass, the chapter of the whole body was held for the daily lection and commemoration of brethren departed, for maintaining discipline, hearing complaints, passing judgment, inflicting punishment; for ordering the services of the day and of the week—for sitting in council and drawing up statutes."
Beautiful as is the general effect of the chapter-house, it must be admitted that its detail is inferior to that of the staircase, which is just one stage earlier in the development of architecture. Nor can its capitals be compared for a moment with those in the nave; the lighter form of structure doubtless calls for a lighter cap, but these are distinctly untidy in their decoration. The crockets are very near having that wholesale look which has caused nineteenth-century architects to make so much of this easily debased ornament. The arrangement, too, by which the fine doorway rises into a window of unmodified pattern seems a rather awkward compromise, especially as the line of the staircase roof cuts slantwise across the lights. One cannot help thinking that an earlier architect would have departed from his uniform pattern at this point, and have inserted a window or arcade better adapted to the position, with the addition, perhaps, of sculpture in the vacant space.