.
On either side of the choir were a set of canopied stalls: these
canopies were removed in 1855 to make the chancel aisles available for
a congregation. As the canopies interfered with both sight and sound,
the floor of the choir was lowered to only three steps above the nave,
and the stalls reduced to four on each side, with a view to make room
for restoring the Norman steps indicated by traces on the wall under
the floor, which led up to the high altar of the Norman church. The
arrangement of steps was then three from the nave to the choir, four
from the choir to the next level to the east, and seven from this to the
presbytery, and one more to the altar platform. In 1866 further changes
were made: the stalls were increased to the present number to provide
sufficient accommodation for the choir, the additions being made out of
old woodwork. The level of the floors was also rearranged; five steps
now lead up from the nave to the choir, seven to the presbytery and one
more to the altar platform, the altar itself being raised yet another
step.

During the restoration carried on from 1855 to 1857, great changes
besides those already mentioned were made in the interior: the whitewash
and plaster were removed from the walls, a west gallery was taken down,
the nave re-seated, the organ transferred from its position upon the
screen to the south transept, and much mischief was done from an
archaeological standpoint, a thing which seems almost inseparable from
any nineteenth-century restoration.

An examination of the masonry shows clearly that all the exterior walls
east of the transepts save the east wall of the presbytery, which is
somewhat out of the vertical, the top hanging forward, have been if not
entirely rebuilt at anyrate completely refaced, and this work was no
doubt done at the restoration at the middle of the nineteenth century.
The doorway in the middle of the north choir aisle is entirely modern;
the doorway which formally occupied this place was provided with a small
porch.

How far this rebuilding and refacing were rendered necessary by the
condition of the walls at that time it is now impossible to say. The
fact that the walls of the nave aisles were not similarly treated may
have been due to want of funds, or it may be that the architects
employed found them in a better condition than the walls of the choir
aisles, and so preserved them, though they considered the latter beyond
the possibility of preser