The position of the high altar has been perhaps more often moved in this cathedral than in any other. In the Norman choir the altar was situated in the centre of the fourth bay east of the present octagon. When Bishop Northwold enlarged the presbytery it was moved one bay further east. After the rebuilding of the three bays west of Northwold's work, it seems to have been moved again westward, as far as the first piers east of the octagon. Again in 1770, at the time of which we are now speaking, it was moved to the extreme east end, and was placed just against the east wall. Now it stands between the second piers from the east. It is not a little singular to notice the enthusiasm with which this eighteenth-century change was greeted. Bentham says[23] it was "an alteration which had long been wished for, by all persons of true taste." And again: "It is allowed by the best judges to be one of the most useful and ornamental Improvements that could have been effected"; and he gives a long disquisition highly praising the alteration. The eastern portion, formerly "an useless encumbrance," was now brought into use. The organ and voices could be better heard, the view of the octagon was greatly improved, and the nave and transepts "have acquired their due Dimensions." Compare this with Hewett's observations less than eighty years later: "Never was there a more ill-judged step than the removal of the Choir hither, towards the latter portion of the last century. To give it such stinted proportions, and for this purpose to displace some of the fine old monuments, and to hide others, to obscure the pillars, and, above all, to erect the miserable organ gallery which we now behold, may surely be pronounced most tasteless performances"[24] When he wrote, the proposal was to replace Walsingham's stalls in the octagon, and to make Bishop Hotham's three Decorated bays into a sacrarium, and so presumably re-erect the high altar on the very spot where it stood in Norman times.