Chapter III: LANCET.—Early in the thirteenth century a beautiful Lady chapel

was built, projecting eastward from the north transept, and separated by a few feet from the north wall of the choir. The same position was adopted later for the Lady chapels of Peterborough and Ely. This chapel is the artistic gem of the cathedral; it is surrounded by arcades of the greatest beauty, with sculptured grotesques interspersed among the foliage that remind one of the rich sculptured work in the retro-choir of Worcester, which is possibly a few years earlier. Later on it received the name of the elder Lady chapel; another Lady chapel having been built in the more normal position at the extreme east of the choir.

IV. Fitzhardinge’s cathedral, supplemented by the Lady chapel, seems to have satisfied the Canons very well for the first half of the thirteenth century. But in the EARLY GEOMETRICAL period (1245-1280), preparations were made to improve the lighting of the _north transept_ by the insertion of a big window in its north wall. The tracery of the present window is later; but its inner jambs, mouldings and shafts, and the external sill and string, as well as a great part of the buttresses, seem to have been executed _c._ 1250. About this date is the fine _doorway_, with a cleverly-contrived lintel, at the south end of the east walk of the _Cloister_.

V. In the MIDDLE of the GEOMETRICAL period, _c._ 1280, the east end of the Lady chapel was rebuilt, and a window with Geometrical tracery inserted; the tracery is of early character, containing nothing but foliated circles. At the same time it received a simple quadripartite vault; and to resist the thrust of this vault, the northern buttresses were reconstructed and weighted with pinnacles. Of these pinnacles only one, at the north-east corner, remains; the others seem to have been reconstructed at the time when the pinnacles of the choir were built.