The very first glimpse of the nave, as one enters by the west door, reveals the superb proportions of the interior. In spite of all statistics of its size, the outward appearance of the building hardly impresses the spectator with the fact that Winchester is the largest cathedral in Northern Europe, and it is not until one is within the walls that the great length of the cathedral begins to become real and its majesty is properly appreciated. The total span, from end to end, of 556 feet, compared with the 537 feet of Ely, the 525 of York, the 524 of Lincoln, and the 516 of Canterbury, would not alone produce the effect of almost infinite vastness, and is certainly not realised either in a distant prospect from the hills or in a nearer view from the cathedral precincts. But when once the nave is entered, owing partly to the open and comparatively low choir-screen, the magnificent vault of nearly 400 feet may easily be understood to have few rivals in the world. Certainly neither of the two buildings in England which are practically equal in size to Winchester Cathedral give the peculiarly overwhelming sense of length produced here. The old epithet of "Royal" may be said to apply as fitly to the cathedral as to the town, and it certainly is a worthy shelter for the bones of half-forgotten dynasties, and as fine a monument of an earlier England as Westminster is of later periods in the development of the country. Of course, as in all English cathedrals, a lack of colour and a sense of coldness and emptiness modifies any unqualified admiration which one might at first feel. But Winchester could well afford to admit far more than the most captious critic could utter against it, and yet claim to be the most stately nave that England can show. Despite the late recasting, the proportions are Norman, and the very core of the pillars is still the original Norman stonework. Notwithstanding the changes wrought by Edingdon and Wykeham, all the more petty detail of the Decorated period is lavished on a colossal structure planned with the simple magnificence of those that "builded better than they knew."