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Updated: May 9, 2025
On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-entrance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion of the nave.
Between this point and the transepts can be plainly seen the marks of the original Norman windows over the heads of the existing Perpendicular ones. #The Octagon# can be nowhere seen to better advantage than from this point of view.
Its mutilations are comparatively small, consisting only in the destruction of the tracey of the north transept window, and some featherings in other windows, and the building and wall to enclose a vestry. The plan of the church is a west tower and spire, nave and aisles, spacious transepts, and a large chancel, with a vestry attached to the north side. The nave has a well proportioned clesestory.
Several Earls of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree then."
The font, dated 1584, has a curious E.E. look. Barton St David, 5 m. S.S.E. of Glastonbury, 4 m. The N. doorway is Norman, the arches of chancel and transepts E.E. The chancel windows are lancets with foliated heads and interior foliations. Barwick, a small village 1 m. S. from Yeovil. The N. aisle is richer and evidently later than the S. aisle.
Yet, with all the changes that were made in this famous cathedral, no other in England has managed to preserve its original plan so nearly undisturbed. Entering the nave from the westward, this grand apartment is found to extend two hundred and fifty feet, and to the intersection of the transepts comprises fourteen bays, three of them being included in the choir.
The #Transepts#, as has been described in the preceding chapter, were lengthened in the fourteenth century the southern one by the incorporation of some low Norman building, thought by some to have been the Lady Chapel, the walls of which were raised; the northern one by the addition of Bembre's chantry. This has caused the north transept to be somewhat longer than the south.
Another child of a king Mary, daughter of Stephen became Abbess in 1160, and her uncle, Henry de Blois of Winchester, built the greater part of the present church about 1125, the western portion of the nave following between 1175 and 1220. The building is 263 feet long and 131 feet broad across the transepts.
In spite of its great age, the cathedral, in contrast with the much blackened gateway, appears surprisingly white and fair. The exterior is very beautiful; the two towers are most majestic, and beyond, one sees the graceful Bell Tower, rising from the point where the transepts cross.
The entrance to this immense and obscure church is always coercive; we instinctively bend the head and advance cautiously under the oppressive majesty of its vault. Durtal stopped when he had gone a few steps, dazzled by the illumination of the choir in contrast with the dark alley of the nave, which only gained a little light where it joined the transepts.
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