CHOIR.—The works in the choir consist of three parts. (1) The construction of three new eastern bays, to join up the Lady chapel to the western bays, as at Lichfield and Chester. (2) The transformation of the three western bays, except the piers and arches, and of the aisles. (3) The vaulting. All the lower work is of great beauty, especially the tabernacle work which replaces the triforium. The foliage of the capitals is naturalistic, and curiously diminutive. The vault, however, is unusual and objectionable in character. It is really a reproduction in stone of a kind of vault—the wagon or barrel vault—which, executed in wood, is a special peculiarity of Somerset. This type of stone tunnel, with ill-arranged liernes, sham ribs carved on its surface, and holes cut into it to admit the heads of the clerestory windows, is fortunately confined to Wells. It is, moreover, a gross blunder in design. The pattern of the ribs would be excellent in a flat ceiling; but in perspective it comes out all wrong, because the architect has omitted to take account of the curves of the vault. The stalls, with their stone canopies, are modern, with ancient misereres. The Transitional windows of the aisles were also replaced by Curvilinear ones. Finally, the church assumed a more dignified appearance externally, for the _Central Tower_ was carried up to its present height between 1318 and 1321; but as yet there were no western towers. As was so often the case, the raising of the central tower “caused the four great piers, on which it rested, to sink into the ground. This, of course, tore away the masonry of the four limbs of the church from the piers, and yawning gaps began to appear between the tower arches and the main walls of the church.” The piers had to be strengthened and the gaps filled up. This was done about 1338. At Canterbury and Salisbury the central piers were strengthened by running across a horizontal stone girder; at Wells the exceedingly strong and exceedingly ugly form of an arch carrying an inverted arch was adopted. This stone framework thus assumes something of the shape of St. Andrew’s Cross, by which name it is generally known. The eastern arch is not strengthened in this fashion, but by a massive screen, which is practically a solid wall, as at Canterbury, York and Ripon. What makes the St. Andrew’s crosses more objectionable still is the hugeness of their mouldings, whose vast scale dwarfs everything in the cathedral into insignificance: in this respect they compare very unfavourably with the horizontal girders at Canterbury. Probably one of the last works of the Curvilinear period was to crown the whole exterior of the cathedral with a fine pierced parapet.