Since Britton's time it has been thought necessary to take another tone and to try to justify these alterations. Mr James Potter, the son of Mr Wyatt's chief assistant, who was afterwards architect to the cathedral, has endeavoured to prove that some of the alterations were unavoidable, and that the others were not made under Wyatt's advice, but in spite of it. Incidentally, in the course of a letter to the _Staffordshire Advertiser_, he speaks of the "unsightly and incongruous work of Wren's," in referring to the wooden reredos, and states that Wren had previously closed the arches of the four most western bays of the choir in order to receive the stalls. He also says: "But so completely did Wren perform his work of blocking-up that he took care to conceal every vestige of moulding, both of the piers and the archivolts, leaving only in view the clustered shafts from which the vaulting of the roof sprang. I have before noticed that Mr James Wyatt's death occurred in A.D. 1813, and that this western portion of the choir remained in the state in which Sir Christopher Wren left it up to the following year. In the early part of that year the architect to the fabric, the late Mr Potter, was instructed by the dean and chapter to cause the entire removal of the old stall work and unmask the three arches (then concealed), this being the space on either side of the choir occupied by the stalls in question. The arches being much dilapidated and past restoration, Dean Woodhouse decided to have them made to correspond with the decorated bays in an easterly direction. This work was executed, as also the canopy of the new stalls, in Roman cement. I cannot myself think that Dean Woodhouse exhibited any degree of bad taste in adopting the existing decorated arches as his model for the new ones; and, as regards the canopies of the new stalls, they were exact resemblances of the old reredos, and surely no modern architect will presume to find fault with them. I must here observe that the choice of material was not confined to the architect employed to carry out the work, but was chosen by the dean and chapter, the state of the fabric fund, out of which the whole of the expenses were defrayed, being insufficient to meet the outlay of a more costly material."