The church-yard has been closed from burials for some years, and a cemetery has been formed a short distance from the town for the use of both parishes, as well as for the precincts which are extra-parochial. Many of the gravestones have been laid down, others removed, but a few inscriptions might be found which would afford food for meditation to those who may feel inclined to examine them. * * * * * At the commencement of our survey we examined the western front, and will now turn our attention to the remains of the north-west Transept. Some persons have doubted whether this wing ever existed, but Sir. G.G. Scott, in his able Lecture on the Cathedral, delivered at the Etheldreda Festival in October, 1873, gave good reasons for believing that it was built at the same time as the Tower and the south wing; and we cannot but think the ruins give strong evidence of its having been similar in all respects to that on the south side. There is in this, as in the other, a grand semicircular arch on the eastern side, and portions of another which probably communicated with some chapel, of which however there are neither remains nor record. It would appear that after the fall of the original wing a new building was begun on the same spot, not however of the same dimensions, and carried but a few feet and then discontinued. A band of panelling in the western face of the buttress corresponds with the work on the monument of Bishop Redman, who died in 1505, but the fall of the Transept took place some years, probably a century, before that. The arches built within the original arches of the Tower to afford additional support are believed to have been erected in the early part of the fifteenth century. We have reasons to hope that steps will ere long be taken to raise a fund towards rebuilding this Transept;[52] which would indeed be a grand improvement, and worthy the support, not only of the Diocese of Ely but of the nation at large. [Footnote 52: At the meeting of the Diocesan Conference at Ely, in July, 1874, the subject of the Restorations of the Cathedral was discussed, and the following Resolution passed unanimously.--"That it is desirable that a Diocesan Committee of Clergy and Laity, with Branch Committees in each Archdeaconry, be formed to co-operate with the Bishop, Dean, and Chapter, for raising funds to carry on the Restoration of the Cathedral by rebuilding in the first instance, after the completion of the works now in hand, the north-west Transept."--_Ely Conference Report, 1874._]