Chapter I: EARLY NORMAN.—In 1079 the present cathedral was commenced by Robert

de Losinga. Like the founder of Norwich cathedral, he was probably from Lorraine. He held the see till 1091. It is asserted by Sir Gilbert Scott that none of his work remains. It seems certain that the east wall of the south transept, the pier-arcade of the choir, and perhaps the triforium also, are eleventh-century work. The design of the transept is curiously artless and archaic. The tall arches of its wall arcade are reminiscences of many a church in Lombardy; the squat little balustraded triforium is just what one finds in the eleventh-century transepts of St. Albans and Chester and Pershore. Proceeding into the choir aisles, probability rises into certainty. The masonry is of the roughest, and coursed in the most casual way; the strings and the bases have the rudest caricatures of mouldings. The piers, too, are just the heavy masses of wall which one finds at St. Albans and Chichester: it is impossible that these piers and the light cylinders of the nave can both have been erected in the twelfth century. What has deceived archæologists is that, though the skeleton of the choir is of the eleventh century, it was smartened up immensely in the following century. In fact, it has gone through a similar process to that which took place in Romsey choir, where the early Norman caps have been recarved by a late Norman sculptor; only at Hereford the renovation has been much more drastic. Looking at the east wall of the south transept, it is impossible to believe that the noble bay of the triforium above the arch of the aisle is of the same date as the balustraded triforium to the right. The Norman choir and its aisles originally ended in three parallel eastern apses, after the fashion of the ninth-century choir of St. Ambrogio, Milan, with probably a rectangular chapel east of the central apse, such as is found at Aix-la-Chapelle. From the south transept projected eastward a rectangular sacristy, with crude, unribbed vault, which still remains, but was enlarged to the east in the fifteenth century.

II. LATE NORMAN, 1100-1145.—To this period belong the nave and the renovation of the choir. The capitals of the nave, near which the stalls of the canons stood, are richly carved, and, like all pre-Gothic carving, are full of classical survivals, acanthus, honeysuckle, etc. The Norman work is far richer than that of Ely, Peterborough, Durham, Gloucester or Tewkesbury; these capitals and those of Southwell nave and Romsey lead up to the rich transitional capitals of Oxford Cathedral. The design of the nave, and still more the choir, was probably the most solid and satisfactory in the country, not even excepting Durham. The triforium is especially magnificent; a copy of it was executed in the transept of Romsey. The bays of the choir are separated by broad pilasters, apparently to carry broad transverse arches. But whether these arches were intended to carry some form of wooden roof (their spandrils being built up), or a vault, cannot be determined.