There is, strictly speaking, no triforium, the space being occupied by the rather florid tabernacle work, the effect of which is, of course, considerably impaired by the absence of statuary. The niches in the presbytery are deeper than those in the choir; they spring direct from the pier-arches, having no spandrel, and they contain richly-foliated brackets, which rest on triple shafts. This part is also marked by triple vaulting shafts of Purbeck, which are carried down to the floor. The clerestory windows contain flowing tracery of an advanced and not very good type. In some the plain mullions are carried on through the head of the window and intersect each other. Above the tabernacle work of the east end is the east window of seven lights, the last bit of the fourteenth-century reconstruction, the last flicker of Decorated freedom. Its curious tracery is still beautiful, doubly so for the glass it enshrines, but the rule and square of Perpendicular domination have already set their mark upon it; the two principal mullions run straight up to the window-head, and part of the tracery between them is rectangular. The inhabitants of Wells are, or were, exceedingly proud of the "vista" into the procession-path and Lady Chapel, which is afforded by the three dainty pointed arches of the east end. So proud were they that they would suffer nothing to stand behind the high altar but a low stone wall, barely higher than the altar itself, an arrangement which, it is hardly necessary to point out, defeated its own end by reducing the whole effect to absolute baldness. Mr Freeman wisely pointed out the need of a respectable reredos, remarking that the original founders never dreamed of the Lady Chapel acting as a "peep-show to the choir." A Lady Chapel, he added, was built specially not to be peeped into, but to be a thing apart from the great whole of the church, from the high altar westward. After a while, a reredos was offered to the church, and approved by Mr J.D. Sedding, who was then the cathedral architect; but there was much opposition, and the scheme was dropped. Dean Plumptre, with characteristic temerity, went so far as to appeal to the witness of the _vox populi_ that the open view was the best. Since then, wiser counsels have prevailed, and a curtain (small and dingy, it is true, but still a curtain) now hangs behind the altar. While giving a measure of dignity to the east end, it, of course, emphasises, as every architect must have known that it would, the charm of the "peep" into the chapels beyond.