The tower is grandly Norman in four stages, each adorned with arcades,
columns, and tracery mouldings. It has, at the corners, square turrets
with their angles cut off, and is surmounted by decorated battlements and
crocketted pinnacles. The spire is decorated English octangular,
elegantly proportioned, enriched with bands, and boldly crocketted in
ribs running up its angles. It terminates in a handsome finial, and is
the loftiest in England except that of Salisbury. The base of the spire
is supported by projecting buttresses at each angle, terminating in a
small pinnacle.
THE CLOISTERS.
The Cloisters, which are entered by a tasteful modern door on the south
side of the nave, form one of the most beautiful quadrangles in England.
They comprise a square of about 174 feet, and are 12 feet wide. They
were commenced by Bishop Walpole about 1297, but were not completed by
succeeding prelates till 1430. The style of architecture is the
decorated, with traces of the perpendicular. The eastern part is the
most ancient, and a progressive change may be observed in the tracery of
the windows, commencing at the north-east corner, continuing through the
south and the west, and terminating with the north sides. The roof is
much admired for its exquisitely beautiful groining, and its bold yet
elegant bosses, with their sculptured subjects and tasteful foliage. The
doorway leading from the eastern aisle of the cloisters to the nave is
deserving especial notice, being a pointed arch with four columns on each
side, having archwolt mouldings, in front of which are seven canopied
niches, with richly-sculptured crockets containing figures. Above the
door, at the south-west corner, are carved figures of “The Temptation of
our First Parents.” In the first two arches on the west side of the door
are two lavatories, where the monks used to wash their hands before going
into the refectory or common eating hall. Over each of these are three
niches, where images formerly stood. The cloisters are surpassed by none
in beauty of architecture and solemnity of effect. They branch off from
the south transept, and enclose a square court or area. There are eleven
noble windows or arched openings on the western side, twelve on the east,
eleven on the north, and eleven on the south. All these windows are
divided into three lights by two columns, and are decorated with a
variety of beautiful tracery. They are of decorated architecture, except
eight on the north side, which have perpendicular tracery in decorated
arches. The upper portion of the tracery of all the windows appears to
have been once filled with stained glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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