When all this was done there
remained of the old Norman church only the transepts and the nave. The
transepts remain to us still, but the nave was transformed, in the very
beginning of the Perpendicular time. It was transformed not rebuilt.
Bishop William of Wykeham has obliterated Bishop Walkelin, but
fundamentally the nave of Winchester remains Norman still. The
Perpendicular work is only a lovely mask, or rather just the sunlight
of the fourteenth century which has come into the dark old Norman
building. The most notable change is the roof, in Norman times a flat
ceiling, now a magnificent vault. But that century was not
content with transforming the nave, it littered it with the first of
its various delights, those chantries which are among the greatest
splendours of this Cathedral, and which still, in some sort,
commemorate Bishop Edingdon (1366), Bishop Wykeham (1404),
Bishop Beaufort (1447), Bishop Waynflete (1416), Bishop Fox (1528) and
Bishop Gardiner (1555) the last Catholic Bishop to fill the See.
[Illustration: NORTH TRANSEPT, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL]
The transformation of the nave, which occupied full an hundred years,
was not, however, the last work undertaken in the Cathedral before the
change of religion.
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