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Updated: May 28, 2025
Each bay contains a single arch which does not occupy the whole space, and which is surmounted by a hood-mould and divided into two sub-arches, but without cusps.
The first great piece of metal-work of this kind executed in England in modern times was the choir screen at Lichfield, designed and carried out by the same artists as the Hereford screen; though the latter and subsequent production transcends that of Lichfield, both in craftsmanship and beauty. It has five main arches, each subdivided into two sub-arches by a slender shaft.
Two of the central shafts, on the south side, are richly ornamented one with twisted decoration, the other with a projecting reticulated pattern. The shaft and sub-arches of the second bay from the east on this side is a modern renewal, as here also the old work was destroyed in 1820 to make room for a pew.
It is worthy of remark that the tympanum over the sub-arches is flush with the lower part of the wall, and that the comprising arches, with all the walling above them, are a plane in advance. The more natural plan would have been to make the comprising arch flush with the wall below, and to have set back the sub-arches and tympanum.
In the triforium the cusps visible in the glazed sub-arches belong to some tracery which has been applied to the back at a later period.
The tympanum is relieved by a sunk quatrefoil in a serrated circle, and so is the space under either of the two central sub-arches. The passage in this bay has been built up, and the bay itself shortened, probably when the tower arches were made.
But there are no sub-arches to any of the flying buttresses, and the slopes of each are protected by lead coverings. And in the exterior of the north aisle the same elements of structure and design may be discovered, even to the presence of twelfth-century remains, the curve of the old encircling apse, and the position of the first sills, abaci, and string-courses.
Every new ornamental stone, to make room for which some original stone is displaced, detracts from the value of the building from an archæological point of view; and though there may be some, or even many, who prefer the trim and smug appearance of modern work to that of the old, instinct with life, full of the thoughts of the builders and workers in wood and stone, whose bones have mouldered into dust in the garth of the vanished cloisters, and whose very names have in many cases been forgotten, yet we hope that those who have this priceless treasure in their keeping may recognise ere it is too late, that the result of a continuance of the process of restoration commenced about the middle of the nineteenth century will be the gradual conversion of a splendid memorial of bygone ages into a modern sham, and they themselves will be regarded, when true love of art becomes general, with the same indignation as that which they themselves feel with regard to those who pulled down the roof of the south transept and cut out the columns and sub-arches of the triforium in days before the Gothic revival set in.
But the most beautiful piece of design in all this work is in the arches of the triforium passage across the east wall, above the entrance to the lady-chapel. It should be noticed that the sub-arches in the triforium here are pointed, not round, as in the case of those in the same position westward of this portion.
In the adjoining narrow bay, the comprising arch is pointed, there are only two sub-arches, and there are no quatrefoils, except in the tympanum on the north side. Doors have also been inserted in this bay to communicate with the passages behind the arcades in the towers.
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