According to Mr Bond, this was probably a very popular destruction. The
reversion, says he, "to the favourite square east end of English church
architecture was popular in itself. Almost every Norman cathedral ended in
an apse; and in the apse, high raised behind the high altar, sat the
Norman bishop facing the congregation; the hateful symbol of Norman
domination." This may have been so, but considering that the monastic
choir of Winchester occupied not one, as the choir does to-day, but
three bays of the nave from which it was separated by a vast rood
screen, though the Bishop had been as high as Haman, he would have been
scarcely visible to the populace in the western part of the nave.
Popular or no, however, the apse was sacrificed and the low retro-choir
built with the Lady Chapel in the Early English style.
The next thing undertaken was to place in the old Norman choir the
magically lovely choir stalls (1245-1315) which happily still remain
to us. Perhaps it was their enthusiastic loveliness which led about
1320 to the rebuilding of the Presbytery and the lovely tabernacle in
the back of the wall of the Feretory.
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