From the situation of this latter wall it seems pretty clear that the Norman Central Tower was of the same size as the present one, and most likely was not taken down till that was built. The North Wall of the Nave contains two doors. The easternmost one deserves particular attention, as it is a good specimen of the mouldings and ornaments of the early Norman. The arches remaining in the east wall of the North Transept are evidently those of a Triforium, or gallery over the lower arches, and it seems probable that a future examination may discover some part of those lower arches still remaining.
The oldest portion of the building is the west wall of the Cloisters, and that portion of the north wall which reaches to the door leading to the Grammar School. These appear to have been erected in the latter part of the Norman style, when considerable advances had been made towards the lighter mouldings of the succeeding styles.
The blank door in the north west corner of the Cloister is singular, from the sort of ornamental feathering attached to a round arch; but as the same kind of ornament is used to the openings of the east wall, leading down to the lately opened lower apartments, it is possible that this ornament may have been added at a subsequent period to an ancient round headed door. These lower apartments above spoken of, the Chapter House, and a part now used as a Vestry, the door of which goes out of the north aisle of the Choir, are all of a simple yet beautiful description of the Early English.
The Chapter House is peculiarly valuable, as it remains in its original state, and appears never to have been altered. Its Vestibule is a composition of singular beauty from the simplicity of its formation, and is, with the arches in front to the Cloister (now filled with some wretchedly ill drawn sashes), [9a] of the same style.
The north wall of the Choir (on account of the garden inaccessible on the exterior side) I have not been able to examine, but from some singular appearances visible from the City Walls, I have some reason to suppose that it is nearly of the same date with the Vestry spoken of above, and that the present windows in the wall were introduced at a subsequent period.
Next in order of date appear to be some of the walls, buttresses, and interior arches, and perhaps some part of the Lady Chapel; but they have been so altered by and intermixed with the reparation of the Chapel in the Perpendicular style, that it requires close inspection to find them out. But so singularly have these reparations been added, that I some places, a part of the Early English arch, with its peculiar toothed ornament, is framed into and forms a part of the arches of those reparations.
Towards the conclusion of the Early English style, the piers, and arches, and gallery of the Choir [9b] appear to have been erected; and though the shafts of the piers appear to be nearly similar, there is a curious difference in the mouldings of the arches on the north and south sides of the Choir. At the period when the Early English style had in its parts advanced to nearly the beauty of the next style, two small arches with tracery in front, close to the screen to the Lady Chapel, were placed in the aisle of the Choir. These are of beautiful workmanship, and nearly resemble arches in the galleries of Westminster Abbey.
There are also two arches in the south wall of the Choir, flattish, and of considerably broader dimensions, and having feathering, whose mouldings are very like those of these two arches. From this circumstance I am led to conclude that this wall also, at least as high as the bottom of the windows, is of the same date,—say perhaps, 1280 to 1300.
From appearances, as they now remain, more particularly as there is no trace at present of what was the Norman South Transept, I apprehend the situation of the Church about the year 1300, (Edward I. died 1307) to have been this:—The Nave, North Transept, and great Tower remaining in their original state; the walls of the North Aisle of the Choir, and the whole of the Lady Chapel, together with those of the Choir as high as the top of the Gallery or Triforium, completed so that service could be performed in the Lady Chapel, and perhaps, with a temporary roof, in the Choir itself.
After the Decorated style [10a] was in some considerable degree established, the building appears to have proceeded, and the walls in the Choir raised; the Clerestory windows bearing evident marks, amidst the present barbarous tracery, of their having been originally of the early Decorated character, and of good execution. [10b]