s evident to anyone so standing as to bring the shafts
on the apse in line with the corner of the choir, and which was
doubtless due to the weight of the Lady-loft. This buttress is of the
same height as the others, but is broader, and has as many as seven
stages, the fourth of which is crowned by a truncated hip roof and
pierced with a slit to light the apsidal chamber within, from whose
sloping top the upper stages spring. Traces of some external means of
access to this apsidal chamber from below may be seen at the west side.
Except one small lancet adjoining this buttress, the windows of the
Lady-loft are square-headed, with mullions branching out into
intersecting arches whose cusps spring from the soffit independently of
the mouldings--an early feature; and the dripstones are square labels
terminating in foliage, but with the ends not returned. Altogether these
are more like the windows of a castle or manor-house than of a church.
The four towards the south are of three lights, but the east window has
five lights and is set higher in the wall, while its dripstone
terminates at one end in a grotesque sitting figure. Various gargoyles
project from the string-course, which rises to pass over the east
window. The angles of the east end seem to rest upon the very edge of
the cornice of the apse, and one wonders how the wall is supported along
the chord of the curve. In reality, however, the apse is not so sharply
curved internally as externally, and its walls are very thick, so that
the square form could be imposed upon the round without much
overlapping. The parapet shows the same wide merlons and cruciform
piercings which characterize the other Decorated parapets of the church,
and it may have been brought forward from the choir-aisle.

The last bay of the latter displays a window like those on the north
side, but having foliage on the capitals of the shafts; and below the
parapet runs the cornice continued from the transept, with a curious
gargoyle upon it. Part of the base of Archbishop Roger's choir-aisle is
visible imbedded between this wall and the apse.

Those parts of the church which were rebuilt after the collapse of the
south-east corner of the tower can be best examined from the roof of the
Lady-loft, which forms with the roofs of the aisles a level surface of
considerable extent.

=The East Side of the South Transept= has three buttresses, crowned by
pinnacles of which the two nearest to the tower are mo