ll the original grandeur of effect.... Here in this first pointed
vaulting was a grievous and irreparable injury, destroying all sense of
proportion throughout the building."

[Illustration: THE NAVE AND NORTH AISLE]

The vaulting shafts and the abaci are of Purbeck marble, and the
capitals are of stone, as are also the corbels, bases, mouldings, and
bosses. All the stonework was formerly painted. Mr Waller, who carried
out the repairs to the nave, had excellent opportunities of seeing what
was left of the painting underneath the many coats of whitewash; he
wrote in 1856: "The painting may be thus generally described. The hollow
of the abacus of the capitals was red, the lower member of the same,
green; the whole of the bell red, the leaves alternately green and
yellow, with the stalks, running down, of the same colours, into the red
bell of the capital. The vertical mouldings between the marble shafts
were red and blue alternately; the lower shafts green and blue, with red
in the hollows, and the foliage on these also is green and yellow. Some
of the horizontal mouldings are partly coloured also. The bosses in the
groining are yellow and green, as in the capitals. All the colouring,
which was very rich, was effected with water colours; in one instance
only has any gold been discerned, and that was upon one of the bosses in
the roof."

The fourteen piers are 30 feet 7 inches in height, or about twice the
height of those at Norwich.[1]

The Norman piers have round or cushioned capitals. Their arches have
zig-zag work in the outer moulding, and a double cable in the soffit. A
cable moulding runs along just above the arches. The grotesque heads on
the arches in the nave are said to represent the various mummeries of
the Anglo-Saxon gleemen. A frieze of such may be seen at Kilpeck Church,
in Herefordshire. It will be noticed how the cable moulding above the
arches passes round some of the western vaulting shafts, and is cut away
for those at the eastmost end of the nave.

Martin in his "Natural History of England" says: "The only blemish on
the church is the enormous size of the pillars in the body of it, which
are much too large in proportion to their height, and _would have been
reduced to a proper size_, chiefly at the cost of the late Bishop
(Benson), had it not been thought that it would have weakened them too
much."

Bishop Benson's architect (Mr. Kent), proposed to "flute" the columns,
but, finding that the pi