Of the earlier cathedrals not a trace remains. The oldest part of the present cathedral consists of the nave, transepts, and the piers and arches of the three western bays of the choir. All this was designed, and much of it built in the time of Fitz-Bohun, who became bishop in 1171. The design is what is called Transitional. It is not early Transitional; for there is none of the heaviness and massiveness of the early Transitional work of Malmesbury, Kirkstall, or Fountains. It is not middle Transitional; for the semicircular arch, which still appears here and thereat Ripon, is conspicuously absent. It is late, very late, Transitional work, done at the very end of the Transitional period (1145-1190), and therefore contemporaneous with the famous French choir of Canterbury (1175-1184) and the beautiful presbytery of Chichester (built after the fire of 1187). But it is more Gothic than either Canterbury or Chichester. In fact, Wells is the most advanced of all the cathedral designs of the Transitional period. There is indeed little of the Romanesque or Norman about it; still it is there. Among the survivals of Romanesque feeling may be noticed the zigzag ornament in the doorways of the north porch, the classical character of several foliage-capitals, the retention of man-headed birds and other Romanesque monsters in the capitals, and, above all, the universal square abacus. All these, however, except the square abacus, find parallels in advanced Gothic work of the thirteenth century elsewhere. And as we find precisely the same stiff foliage-capitals in Chichester presbytery subsequent to 1187, and in St. Joseph’s chapel, Glastonbury (1180-1190), we may be certain that the design belongs to Fitz-Bohun’s episcopate, before whose death in 1191 the church was rising fast, and its style an object of universal admiration. [Illustration: TRIFORIUM OF NAVE.]