Chapter II: LANCET.—The lower parts of the northern and southern faces of the

piers of the tower are flat: their shafts being stopped by corbels instead of descending to the ground. This was to allow the stalls of the Canons to be placed close up to the piers. Hence it is clear that in the Norman church the Canons sat, as at Norwich, in the crossing and the western bays of the nave. Like the Benedictine monks of Canterbury, they wanted to get into the choir. And so the Norman choir, being altogether inadequate to contain stalls and sanctuary, as at Canterbury, was pulled down; and a beautiful early Gothic choir of seven bays was built. Of this the vaulted aisles and the pier-arches still remain. The work is late in the Lancet period (1190-1245); for in the south aisle the Lancet windows are developing into plate-tracery, and the charming arcade on the wall is cinquefoiled. The new choir was not only far in advance of its Norman predecessor in length and height; but it was also 12 feet broader. The church could not be broadened to the south, because the cloister would prevent any removal of the wall of the south aisle, when the nave was rebuilt. So the south wall of the choir was rebuilt on the old foundations: the southern row of piers probably also rest on the foundations of the Norman piers. The central aisle of the choir was made much broader than that of the nave, with which, therefore, it is out of line; the same is the case with the north aisle of the choir.

At the same time the eastern apse of the south transept was rebuilt in the style of the day, with the crisply carved foliage of the later years of the Lancet period. The northern transept was to have been rebuilt on a more extensive scale, not being cramped as the south transept was, by monastic buildings adjacent. It was to have had an eastern aisle; but when one pier of the aisle had been built, and part of its eastern wall (a fragment of which, with string-course, survives), the work was suddenly stopped.