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Updated: June 12, 2025
The last pendentive of the vaulting rests on a single shaft springing directly from a head-corbel. The string-courses are not of the same pattern with those on the older bays. On the south side the westernmost Perpendicular bay, up to the triforium, is solid and covered with cinquefoil panelling.
The triforium is almost as lofty as the nave-arches, and the solidity of these, surmounted by the grandeur of the upper arcade, gives a magnificent aspect to the nave. Above is the fine vaulted roof, the elaborately carved bosses giving a series of scenes from sacred history extending from the Creation to the Last Judgment.
If he raised it as high as the great supporting arches, which is of course possible, there must have been also supports in all the four adjacent portions of the church, reaching almost to the summit of the arches, so that he would have had to build at least one bay of the triforium and clerestory stages. If he did so, all such work perished with the fall of the tower.
The changes in style during this time are easily traced. The nave is late but pure Gothic, a really fine design, though a good deal spoiled by the loss of tracery in so many of the windows both in aisles and clerestory. In a large panelled triforium a very keen eye may possibly detect in the lowest range of ornament a tendency it is nothing more to Renaissance ideas.
The bases of the western pillars, the change in the depth of the mouldings, characteristic changes in the capitals in the triforium range, and especially the grand arches below the transept towers, which are pointed, but enriched with ornamentation of pronounced Norman character, all point to the later date of this western transept.
The south transept, like that of the north, with its ample double aisles, is of great width, and, were the framing of the great rose window of less angularity, it would indeed produce a remarkable effect of grandeur. The other windows, and the arcading of the triforium, are singularly graceful; not lacking either strength or firmness, though having no glass of great rarity or excellence.
The choir is of true, though not lofty, proportions, the aisles appearing perhaps too low, if anything, for the height of the nave, which otherwise appears exceedingly generous with respect to the extent of its triforium and clerestory.
Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in the nave, with its massive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel.
The shafts are semi-detached and bear capitals enriched with foliated and grotesque ornament. In each bay on the triforium level a wide Norman arch envelops two smaller arches, supported by semi-circular piers on each side. A richly carved square-string course runs along the base of the triforium.
Three arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium running completely around the church. The retablo of the high altar is richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the reja, which closes off the sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmanship.
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