asted from the
beginning of 1825 until about 1830. Mr. L. N. Cottingham was in charge,
Messrs. Bayfere, Smirke, Savage, and Twopeny being also consulted at
various times. The roofs of the choir and its transept, though they had
been thoroughly repaired only fourteen years before, were soon found to
be quite unsafe and so eaten up with dry-rot, that it was necessary to
renew them. The part of the south wall between the main transept and the
chapter room was also dangerously out of the perpendicular. The great
masses of brick within and triangular buttresses without, the clumsy
attempts of the eighteenth-century architects to save it, had by their
subsidence even increased the mischief. Cottingham removed them and
built up the wall, which deviated twenty-two inches from the upright,
with a face of ashlar which constituted an invisible buttress. He also
found that the central tower consisted to a great extent of rubble, and
was incapable of supporting the spire. He almost entirely rebuilt it
from the roof, and left it in its present form, finished with corner
pinnacles but without a spire. All these serious works affecting the
safety of the fabric involved the setting aside, to a great extent,
of restoration in an ornamental sense. The east end was, however,
considerably improved by the removal of the huge altar screen that
concealed much of it. He opened out and renewed the lower range of
windows there, of which the central had been quite, and side ones
partially, blocked with brick, and lowered the altar and its pavement,
to show the bases of the chancel pillars. The ugly upper window he
merely restored, and left it for Sir G. Scott to erect in its stead the
more appropriate tier of lancets that now take its place. Cottingham
also renewed many other windows, including the great west one, those on
either side of the presbytery, and the Decorated one by the chapter
room. In the nave some red brick flooring had York pavement substituted
for it, and in the choir some Grecian panelling and a cornice along the
side walls were removed. The stalls also were repaired, and the paint
cleared off the seats in the choir. There are two other pieces of work
in connection with which Cottingham's name is often mentioned. One of
these was the restoration of the chapter house door, with parts of which
much fault has been found. The other was not so remarkable in itself as
for a great discovery that it led to. I refer to the removal, quite at