The older part of this
building (1125-1150) is to the east of the nave, and consists of
sanctuary and transepts: the nave was begun towards the end of the
twelfth century, the church being finished in the beginning of the
thirteenth. The church is cruciform, two hundred and sixty-three feet
long and one hundred and thirty-one wide; it consists of a great
sanctuary with aisles ending in chapels, square without, apsidal
within, wide transepts each having an eastern apsidal chapel, nave with
aisles, and over the crossing a low tower which was once higher, having
now a seventeenth century polygonal belfry. To the east of the
sanctuary stood two long chapels destroyed since the Suppression. We
have here, as I have said, one of the most glorious Norman buildings in
the world, Norman work which at the western end passes into the most
delightful Early English. The cloister stood to the south of the nave,
to the north stood of old the parish church, growing out of the north
aisle as it were, built so in 1403. This has been destroyed and the
north aisle wall has been rebuilt as in 1150.
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