CHAPTER III
THE INTERIOR
The very first glimpse of the nave, as one enters by the west door, reveals the superb proportions of the interior. In spite of all statistics of its size, the outward appearance of the building hardly impresses the spectator with the fact that Winchester is the largest cathedral in Northern Europe, and it is not until one is within the walls that the great length of the cathedral begins to become real and its majesty is properly appreciated. The total span, from end to end, of 556 feet, compared with the 537 feet of Ely, the 525 of York, the 524 of Lincoln, and the 516 of Canterbury, would not alone produce the effect of almost infinite vastness, and is certainly not realised either in a distant prospect from the hills or in a nearer view from the cathedral precincts. But when once the nave is entered, owing partly to the open and comparatively low choir-screen, the magnificent vault of nearly 400 feet may easily be understood to have few rivals in the world. Certainly neither of the two buildings in England which are practically equal in size to Winchester Cathedral give the peculiarly overwhelming sense of length produced here. The old epithet of "Royal" may be said to apply as fitly to the cathedral as to the town, and it certainly is a worthy shelter for the bones of half-forgotten dynasties, and as fine a monument of an earlier England as Westminster is of later periods in the development of the country.
Of course, as in all English cathedrals, a lack of colour and a sense of coldness and emptiness modifies any unqualified admiration which one might at first feel. But Winchester could well afford to admit far more than the most captious critic could utter against it, and yet claim to be the most stately nave that England can show. Despite the late recasting, the proportions are Norman, and the very core of the pillars is still the original Norman stonework. Notwithstanding the changes wrought by Edingdon and Wykeham, all the more petty detail of the Decorated period is lavished on a colossal structure planned with the simple magnificence of those that "builded better than they knew."
Perhaps it is not quite fair to the later architects to attribute all the excellence of the work to the earlier builders, for the graceful columns of the nave's eleven bays which rise unbroken to where the roof-groining springs from their capitals are made by Wykeham to fulfil a new duty which entirely alters their whole aspect. The general effect has been said to be as if a Norman architect had expressed himself in the more refined idiom of the early fifteenth century. Yet the work of Edingdon and Wykeham was ruthless in its way. The original Norman nave of Walkelin consisted of the normal three storeys, of equal height in this case—the main arches, triforium, and clerestory. At the present day the main arches are fully half as high again as they were in the Norman cathedral, while the base of the clerestory has been brought down to meet them, so that the triforium appears to have vanished or rather to exist merely as a balcony over each arch. As a matter of fact, however, it was the old clerestory which was entirely removed and replaced by the present upper storey. On p. 35 we see on the one hand typical Norman work, of the character still existing at Romsey Abbey and Christchurch Priory—to mention only the two large churches nearest to Winchester. During the conversion of the nave the bases and capitals of the grouped shafts of the main arches were removed, together with all the masonry above them. This is not mere conjecture, for the Norman shafts and capitals which still remain on the north side of the nave, in the second bay from the crossing, where they were covered by the ancient rood-screen, show that the pier-arches of the nave sprang from the same height as those of the transepts; the Norman main arch of the triforium still exists in every compartment over the vault of the side aisles to prove that the triforium of the nave was practically on the same level as that of the transepts, and the tops of the Norman shafts yet remaining above the nave-vaulting are additional evidence that the nave was to all intents and purposes uniform with the transepts in its general arrangement. In the south aisle, moreover, there is to be seen the lower extremity of a Norman shaft, once covered by some votive altar or shrine which was removed during the destructive period of the Reformation. "It may be readily noted," says the writer of a recent article on Winchester Cathedral, "how the new ashlar was brought down to the level of this vanished altar, and how Wykeham's vaulting-shaft has been made to end in foliation where it once rose in receipt of prayers and wax-candles vowed in return for mercies vouchsafed." In the seven westerly piers of the south aisle, the Norman stonework has merely received new mouldings; while flat Norman buttresses can be seen outside between the clerestory windows, also on the south side.
On the division into two, in place of the usual three, storeys, it may, perhaps, be of interest to quote some remarks of Willis in the "Proceedings of the Archæological Institute." "The compartment of Wykeham's nave," he says, "is divided into two parts vertically instead of three; for although it has a triforium gallery, yet this is so completely subordinated to the clerestory window that it cannot be held as a separate division of the composition, as in the Norman work where the triforium compartment is of all importance and similar in decoration to the other two, although not exactly like them. In Wykeham's work, on the contrary, we find above the lofty pier-arch what at first sight appears to be a clerestory window divided at mid-height by a transom, and recessed under a deeply-pointed archway. But it is above the transom only that the real window is formed by glazing the spaces between the monials. Below the transom these spaces are filled with panels, and two narrow openings cut through the latter give access from the roof to a kind of balcony which projects over the pier-arches. In each compartment this balcony exists, but there is no free passage from one to the other. This mode of uniting the triforium and clerestory by the employment of a transom dividing the stone panels of the former from the glazed lights of the latter is common enough at the period of Wykeham's work and before it, but the balcony is unusual."
