The great Norman church which Bishop Walkelin built to take the place
of the Saxon minster cannot fundamentally have differed very much from
the church we see, at any rate so far as its nave and transepts were
concerned. The eastern arm was, however, different. It consisted of
four bays, with north and south aisles at the end of which were
rectangular chapels, an apse about which the aisles ran as an
ambulatory, and beyond the apse an eastern apsidal chapel. Of this
church all that really remains to us is the crypt and the transept. In
the crypt we divine the old eastern limb of the church, and are
doubtless in the presence of the earliest work in the Cathedral. It is,
however, in the double aisled transepts that we can best appreciate how
very glorious that first Norman church must have been; there is nothing
in England more wonderful; and so far as I know there is nothing in
Europe quite to put beside them. If only the whole mighty church could
have remained to us!
The first disaster that befell Bishop Walkelin's building was the fall
of the central tower in 1107, which all England, at the time,
attributed to the burial beneath it of William Rufus.
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