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This is, without doubt, the upper part of one of the buttresses of the old nave. The clearstorey windows are actually larger than those of the aisle below, and are again rather acutely pointed for late work. They are of five lights, and the two mullions in the middle are carried up through the head, but a sub-arch comprises the two outer lights on either side.
The panels are pointed and divided each into two cinquefoil divisions. The Perpendicular clearstorey windows have their rims moulded, but are not splayed. The vaulting-shafts resemble those in the Decorated bays, but their corbels are polygonal and have the sides slightly hollowed, and the abacus of the capital is a half-lozenge.
This angle contains the tower staircase, which is lighted by a little window in the upper corbelling and is reached from the clearstorey gallery of the transept. On this side of the church the parapet walk has to be carried round the corners of the tower on squinches. =The Central Tower.
In the clearstorey the shafts of the round arch in each bay are doubled, each couple sharing a common plinth and capital, from which latter springs a tiny shaft that carries the edge-roll of the arch; and the lancet arches also, where they adjoin the solid piers between the bays, have a shaft in the jamb.
The appearance of the wall externally suggests that these arches may have once been round, and the unusual bulk of the two aisle-arches seems further to support the theory of a 'casing. In the clearstorey the windows have hood-moulds, but otherwise are treated much as in the nave.
The three gargoyles below have been renewed, and none of the gargoyles on choir or transepts are earlier, perhaps, than the Decorated period. =The Choir. North Side.= Here the three westernmost bays of the aisle and clearstorey respectively are Archbishop Roger's work.
Each aisle shows at the end a window of the same pattern with these in the sides, and that in the south aisle has foliage on the capitals of its shafts and is surmounted by a little window of trefoil form which lights a staircase within, for staircases ascend over these windows in the thickness of the wall and run up the angles of the clearstorey.
The parapet is battlemented, not for military purposes but for ornament, and at intervals are the beginnings of panelled pinnacles, set diagonally and partially embedded in the battlements. The clearstorey has no pilasters or buttresses, but where it joins the west tower a projecting strip of masonry may be seen half imbedded in the Early English work and half in the Perpendicular.
There is no triforium; but a passage, at a slightly lower level than in Archbishop Roger's bays, runs below the great clearstorey windows, which were once, no doubt, gorgeous with stained glass. Their arches are moulded, but the splay is left plain.
They are banded at the string-course below the triforium, and end at the sill of the clearstorey in a compound capital, of which the three central members are square, and the others round. The vaulting hides a feature which is not found in the transept, namely, a little lancet arch whose apex comes exactly behind the roof-shaft in each bay.
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