§ 32. The presbytery or space west of the altar in churches of the Norman period varied in length from two bays to four. At its west end a step (_gradus presbyterii_) divided it from the quire, which, as already noted, occupied the length of the crossing and the eastern bay or bays of the nave. The quire was an oblong enclosure cut off from the nave, aisles and transepts by screens on three sides, against which the stalls of the convent were arranged. It had three doorways. The western entrance, in the middle of the _pulpitum_ or quire screen, was called the lower entry (_introitus inferior_). The upper entries (_introitus superiores_) or quire-doors (_ostia chori_) were lateral entrances in the screens next the transepts, on either side of the presbytery step, and were the way by which the convent came into quire. When the Sunday procession left the high altar, it passed out of the quire by the upper entry on the side furthest from the cloister, and returned, after making the circuit of the church and cloister-buildings, through the lower entry in the _pulpitum_. The stalls in the quire were occupied according to seniority. In an abbey church, the abbot sat against the western screen, on the south side of the lower entry, while the prior sat in the corresponding stall on the north. Where a prior was head of the house, he sat in the southern stall and the sub-prior in the northern. In the middle of the quire was the lectern, where, as at Durham, 'the Moncks did singe ther Legends at Mattins and other tymes.' On certain festivals, the epistle and gospel were chanted from the _pulpitum_ at the west end of the quire. In these general arrangements, allowing for the divergences in the ritual of the various orders, there was very little difference between the interior of a monastic quire and that of a church of secular canons. Where medieval stall-work remains, as at Winchester and Chester, or in the collegiate quires of Lincoln, Beverley, and Ripon, the similarity is at once apparent; but monastic quires were effectually isolated from the nave by the rood-screen west of the _pulpitum_, an arrangement which, though not unknown, was very rare in collegiate churches.