It was not always so.
That long nave was once forty feet longer and was flanked upon either
side by a Norman tower as at Ely. Must one regret their loss? No, the
astonishment of the nave within makes up for everything; there is no
grander interior in the world, nor anywhere anything at all like it. Up
that vast Perpendicular nave one looks far and far away into the
height, majesty and dominion of the glorious Norman transept, and
beyond into the light of the sanctuary. It has not the beauty of
Westminster Abbey, nor the exquisite charm of Wells, but it has a
majesty and venerable nobility all its own that I think no other church
in England can match.
Of the old Saxon church, so far as we really know, the only predecessor
of the present church, nothing really remains. This, as I have said,
had been founded by King Kynegils upon his conversion, by St Birinus in
635. We know very little about it, except that it was enlarged or
rebuilt in the middle of the tenth century by St Aethwold, and if we
may believe the poetical description of Wolstan, we shall be inclined
to believe the church was enlarged, for it appears to have been a very
complex building with a lofty central tower, having a spire and
weathercock, in accordance with the Bull of Pope Urban, and a crypt,
both the work of St Elphege.
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