THE WEST FRONT (FROM AN OLD PRINT). During the episcopate of the Hon. Henry Egerton, 1723-1746, an ancient building of early Norman date used as a chapel for the palace was pulled down. It consisted of an upper and a lower portion, the lower a chapel dedicated to St. Katherine and the upper one to St. Mary Magdalene. Part of one wall still remains. It was during the next episcopate, on Easter Monday 1786, that a terrible calamity occurred,—the fall of the great western tower. Directly and indirectly this was the worst accident that has happened to Hereford Cathedral. The west front was utterly destroyed, and a great part of the nave seriously injured, while the injudicious restoration begun in 1788 by the Dean and Chapter, with James Wyatt for architect, did nearly as much to ruin the cathedral as the fall of the tower. [Illustration: THE NAVE AFTER THE FALL OF THE WEST END.] THE NAVE AFTER THE FALL OF THE WEST END. _From a drawing by T. Hearne_, 1806. Already, at Salisbury, Wyatt had been busy with irreparable deeds of vandalism, but at Hereford he surpassed his previous efforts in this direction. He altered the whole proportion of the building, shortening the nave by a bay of 15 feet, erected a new west front on a "neat Gothic pattern," and availed himself of the chance of removing all the Norman work in the nave, above the nave arcade substituting a design of his own. One of the strangest items in his scheme was a plaster hod moulding round each of the arches above the arcade. These eccentricities were removed not long since, but the roughened lines for adhesion of the plaster still remain. Inside the west front may also still be seen large spaces of wall painted to represent blocks of stone, but no more so in reality than the wall of any stucco residence. It should not be forgotten, while condemning the meaningless insipidity of Wyatt’s work, that it was enthusiastically approved in his own day, and that the public generally were as much to blame as himself. The old spire was taken down from the central tower, and in order to give it apparent height the roofs of both nave and choir were lowered in pitch, its parapet was raised, and some pinnacles were added. At the same time the churchyard was levelled and new burying-grounds provided for the city elsewhere. In 1837, Dr. Thomas Musgrave was promoted to the See of Hereford. He was a man of sound judgment and of much practical ability, and it was during his episcopacy that a serious competent and thorough repair of the cathedral was at last undertaken at a cost of £27,000, to which no one devoted more loving care or more untiring energy than Dean Merewether.