[Illustration: CONJECTURAL VIEW OF INTERIOR OF ARCHBISHOP ROGER'S NAVE
BY SIR G. G. SCOTT.
(By the kind permission of the Archaeological Institute.)]

CHAPTER III.

THE INTERIOR.

=The Nave.=--On entering through the west doors a perspective is disclosed
of 133 feet to the end of the Nave, 170 feet to the Rood Screen, and 270
feet to the end of the Choir. The Early English builders have preserved
two bays of Archbishop Roger's nave and have incorporated them into the
west towers,[55] and the two great tower-arches which they have cut
through the Transitional walling are very fine specimens of the Early
English style. Each of the half-pillars that support them is a cluster
of five large engaged shafts separated by very deep hollows, and upon
every shaft there is a large fillet, which is carried up into the
capital and down over the base. The base consists of two round mouldings
separated by a hollow and fillets, and overhangs the plinth so much as
to suggest that the floor just here has been lowered. The capitals and
the arches themselves (which are of three orders) are moulded with
rounds and hollows very strongly marked, and the hood of the southern
arch terminates eastwards in a bunch of foliage.

The interior of the towers is more richly treated than is usual. Over
the tower-arch is a small arcade of four members with clustered shafts,
and with a string below, while the other three walls are plain up to the
windows, each of which is flanked, as on the exterior, by two blind
lancets. The arcading thus formed has clustered and banded shafts (not
detached), behind which ran a passage, now blocked, and below the sill,
and a little distance apart, are two strings, to the lower of which the
sills of all the windows save two descend in steps. The windows are not
splayed, and those which now look into the aisles are unglazed, and
their flanking lancets are of unequal width. All the arches are much
moulded and ornamented with the dog-tooth, and the central shaft of each
cluster has a fillet. In each corner a detached shaft springs from a
round corbel above the lowest string and rises to the impost of the
arches, being banded twice on the way; and from its capital another
shaft runs up to the ceiling. The doors to the spiral staircases open
into little square lobbies which have vaults with groin-ribs springing
from corbels.[56] In the north tower is a modern stained window of some
merit.

The two bays of Arch