ginal height, but in the reconstruction,
the parts of the transept nearest to the tower were also rebuilt, and
thus we have here two periods of Norman work; the main building of 1107
and the reconstruction after that date.

Of the Transitional work of the second half of the twelfth century very
little is to be seen at Winchester. It was for the most part the period
of that great Bishop Henry of Blois, and he was probably too much
immersed in the brutal politics of his time, too busy building and
holding his castle to give much thought to the Cathedral. The font,
however, dates from his time, and perhaps a door in the north-western
bay of the south transept.

The earliest Gothic work in the Cathedral is the chapel of St
Sepulchre, which was built upon the northern wall of the choir before
the north transept. There we may still see wall paintings of the
Passion of Our Lord. Not much later is the retro-choir. This consists
of three bays, and is the largest in England. It was begun in 1189 by
Bishop Godfrey de Lucy, and we must admit at once that it is wholly
without delight, and yet to build it the Norman apse was sacrificed.
According to Mr Bond, this was probably a very popular destruction. The
reversion, says he, "to the favourite square east end of English church
architecture was popular in itself. Almost every Norman cathedral ended in
an apse; and in the apse, high raised behind the high altar, sat the
Norman bishop facing the congregation; the hateful symbol of Norman
domination." This may have been so, but considering that the monastic
choir of Winchester occupied not one, as the choir does to-day, but
three bays of the nave from which it was separated by a vast rood
screen, though the Bishop had been as high as Haman, he would have been
scarcely visible to the populace in the western part of the nave.
Popular or no, however, the apse was sacrificed and the low retro-choir
built with the Lady Chapel in the Early English style.

The next thing undertaken was to place in the old Norman choir the
magically lovely choir stalls (1245-1315) which happily still remain
to us. Perhaps it was their enthusiastic loveliness which led about
1320 to the rebuilding of the Presbytery and the lovely tabernacle in
the back of the wall of the Feretory. When all this was done there
remained of the old Norman church only the transepts and the nave. The
transepts remain to us still, but the nave was transformed, in the very
beginning