Indeed, everything in the presbytery has an early look, except its plan and the shape of its apses. The plan is exceedingly complicated; with apse, ambulatory, and radiating chapels. But all three features appear in the ancient church of Vignory, which cannot well be later than the middle of the eleventh century. The radiating chapels, indeed, go back to the very earliest days of Christian architecture; for they formed part of the Basilican church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, as built, A.D. 326, by the Emperor Constantine; and have survived all the transformations which that church has undergone. That the apses, indeed, should not be semicircular—as they are even in St. Hugh’s choir of Lincoln—but polygonal, is certainly startling; though here also there are precedents as far back as the sixth century, in such Byzantine churches as that of S. Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna. In the nave, on the other hand, everything points to a date well advanced—certainly not earlier than 1122. Not only the loftiness of the columns, but the fact that they are columns, is a mark of twelfth-century work. The column does not occur in Normandy, the mother of our Romanesque; but everywhere the compound pier. Capital and abacus, too, are circular on plan; this is usually a sign of late Norman work. The nave of Southwell, which also has circular capitals and abaci, was not built before 1120. But the ornamentation of the nave is decisive: the zigzag and the cables could not have been executed in the days of Prior Conrad of Canterbury, before the chisel had come into use. [Illustration: TRIFORIUM OF APSE.] Something, however, was consecrated at Gloucester in 1100; and that was probably the eastern arm of the church—not necessarily the chapels—and as much of the rest of the church as was necessary to complete the enclosure of the monastery: viz., part of the north transept and the wall of the north aisle of the nave as high as the sills of the windows. Then the monks probably turned their attention to the domestic buildings of the monastery, which till now may have been temporary buildings of wood, and only some twenty years later resumed work in the church, which they then completely finished. Perhaps the first thing to do would be to add the top storey to the presbytery; for a church seems not unfrequently to have been consecrated before its clerestory was built, a temporary roof being erected at the level of the triforium. The presbytery being at last really completed, the monks would then proceed to complete the transepts and the crossing, to build the lower stage of the tower, and the nave and west front. When they did reach the nave, they altered the design altogether; as did the Tewkesbury monks also. They put up naves of the worst possible proportions; with piers so lofty that triforium and clerestory were almost squeezed out of existence.