“I mentioned in my first Report the massive stonework, some seven or eight feet in thickness, which blocked the rood-screen, and which I suppose to have been added to strengthen the tower piers. On examination this was found originally to have been hollow, but to have been filled up solid for the purpose suggested. The entrance to the choir was through a roof and uncouth archway in this vast wall, but on searching the contents of the [Illustration: GROINING OF ROOD SCREEN, SHOWING THE FLYING RIBS.] wall the _débris_ was discovered of the original archway, and of the side doorways into the hollow spaces. These details were found to be parts of a beautifully groined space, closely resembling the existing archway through the rood-screen, and forming a second, though varied, bay of that beautiful entrance. We have been enabled to reconstruct this feature, using the old remains so far as they would go. This beautiful addition to the choir was wholly beyond anything I had anticipated.” In the _Computus_ under 1492 is an entry recording that the sum of 100 shillings[16] for materials for a work which would seem to be for the blocking up of the screen, and no doubt the constant trouble arising from the weakness of the western tower arch rendered some such course imperative. In De Leiâ’s time, or rather later, the screen probably stood between the tower piers, as the bases of their eastern responds are raised above those of the nave and suggest an earlier screen and its platform. And it is not unlikely that the pleasing incongruity of the western side of the screen is due to the retention of some portions of earlier work. There are two steps to the first bay of the screen, and on the second stand the wrought-iron gates (1847), and to the second bay there are three more steps before we reach the level of the choir. Gower’s characteristic ornaments and mouldings are somewhat lavishly bestowed about the screen, and doubtless his statue was intended to stand in the niche on the south side towards the nave above the curious aperture fitted with intersecting tracery. For a description of the tombs, see p. 71. Along the length of the screen runs an oak cove cornice--possibly Butterfield’s work--copied from an existing piece which is original. The arches are fitted with late Perpendicular tracery, very white in appearance, and the springers of the vaulting seem not to have been completed. The groining has now been finished and an oak cornice added, and on the rood-screen is the organ. In 1571 30_s_. seems to have been paid for taking down the rood-loft, but it is now almost impossible to be sure what precisely this meant.[17] The views north, south, east, and west are well worth the little walk on to the organ-loft level. Various details are well seen from this height, notably the interior of the tower, the nave-roof, and the general arrangements and fittings of the choir.