The gallery is now used as a kind of museum for any odd fragments that are discovered in the precincts. Among them is the quaintly carved base of a Norman cross, which before the Reformation stood, together with a pulpit, at the west end of the nave, near the place now occupied by the fountain. The subjects represented are the Fall, Abraham's Sacrifice, the Giving of the Law.
The open triforium directly over the Lyttleton monument in this transept is an important relic of the second Saxon church, and a good instance of the slight things which sometimes turn the scales in antiquarian disputes. Professor Willis had in 1840 pronounced (as against Dr. Ingram, whose pet theory it was that the triforium was the clerestory of Ethelred's church) that the triforium must be of Norman design, because no grooves could be found for the insertion of glass in the shafts, as would be the case if it were Saxon.
Mr. Harrison accordingly, in December 1891, made a close examination of the shaft and small arches in the open triforium which had struck him as of Saxon character, with the result that the grooves for glass were discovered to exist beyond a doubt, but so neatly stopped with mortar as previously to have escaped notice. They can be clearly discerned inside the arches, by anyone with good sight, from the floor of the church. The base of the shaft which carries these arches is equally decisive, for it is "pudding shaped," entirely different from the other bases, and most unmistakably Saxon: it also can be seen from the floor, but is worth an inspection from the gallery over the choir-vestry, whence there is also an impressive view of the church. With this exception, the triforia and clerestories of the transepts are similar to those of the nave, though Saxon tooling has been found on the wall, and there is a break in some of the masonry on the angle shaft near the vestry door, which possesses a Saxon base. The principal arches of the clerestories are not pointed, which proves that the transepts were rebuilt earlier than the nave. Two corbels on the east side of the transept mark the site of a musicians' gallery which once projected beyond the triforium.
St. Lucy's Chapel in the second bay of the old south transept aisle was used as a vestry in the days when the transept was devoted to domestic purposes. It must have ruined the effect of this part of the church, and formed an extremely inconvenient vestry. Now the chapel is used, not very appropriately, as a baptistery; it contains a font, well designed and carved, which was executed in 1882. It is Norman or earlier, with the exception of the eastern wall, which was rebuilt in order to hold the present beautiful window. This window is of an uncommon type; the three lights, less than half the height of the tracery above them, commence considerably below the spring of the arch. The tracery, which reminds one of that in Dorchester Abbey, a few miles away, is flamboyant in character, suggesting the form which the decadence of Gothic architecture took in France; only in this case it is a decadence that is vigorous as well as graceful.
The chapel recalls the time when King Charles held his court in Christ Church, at the time of the Civil War, many cavalier knights being buried here.
Monuments of the South Transept and Chapel.—There are the tombs of several prominent royalists in the transept as well as in St. Lucy's little chapel, most of which might well be spared were it not for their historic interest. That of Viscount Grandison, for instance, consists of an urn on a pedestal, altogether huge and hideous; yet Grandison was a brave and doubtless a graceful cavalier, who died in Oxford of wounds received in the attack on Bristol in 1643. Another ugly, big monument is that of Sir E. Littleton, keeper of the Great Seal, who took up arms "for the royal majesty, during the execrable siege of this city." Sir John Smith is also buried here: he "redeemed the banner royal" at the battle of Edgehill, was knighted on the field by the King, and died of his wounds in 1644, at the early age of twenty-eight.
A very odd monument is that to Viscount Brouncker, who died in 1645, having been chamberlain to the young Charles, then Prince of Wales. A smartly dressed gentleman and his wife are represented seated in meditative attitudes, each with an elbow on the table, while between their two elbows is propped a skull.
In the tracery of St. Lucy's chapel is to be found the finest old glass in the cathedral. It belongs to the year 1330, or thereabouts, and enables one to imagine what the church must have looked like when glass of this magnificent description abounded, and hangings and altar-pieces and wall-paintings, hardly less rich, filled every conspicuous position. In the uppermost compartment of the tracery is a figure of our Lord seated in glory; below there are angels with censers, and next two Augustinian monks in blue and white robes, kneeling with outstretched arms; then come coats of arms, and various grotesque beasts, all most richly coloured in ruby and blue and green and gold. Below, in the principal spaces, are (1) St. Martin on horseback giving his coat to the beggar; (2) the martyrdom of St. Thomas à Becket: St. Thomas' head has been knocked out by some fanatic, and replaced with white glass; the armour and shields of the knights should be noticed; (3) St. Augustine, who holds a pastoral staff, is teaching his monks and others. In the next four spaces are:—The head of a king; St. Cuthbert, carrying the head of St. Oswald, and wearing a green chasuble; St. Blaise, in a mulberry-coloured chasuble; the head of a queen. The glass in the three main lights was destroyed, and then replaced by some of seventeenth century work, but this too is now gone, all except a portion of the upper part, which shows that the design was architectural in character, and the colour that of fog-smitten stone-work.
