Entering beneath the Norman arch of the west door, the visitor found over his head a gallery which carried the great organ. A screen supported the gallery, making a vestibule for the church, keeping out the wind. A fragment of the base of this screen remains on the south side, near a bit of the pavement which was put in by John of Kent. Standing in the screen door and looking to the east, the high roof reached over the nave, the choir, the presbytery, and the chapel of the nine altars, to the splendour of the east window. The Norman nave and transepts, with their great pillars and round-headed clerestory windows, represent the primitive Puritan simplicity of the Cistercians. The choir and presbytery and the nine-altars chapel are in the style called Early English. The great windows, east and west, replacing plainer windows, are, like the tower, in the style called Perpendicular. To-day, by the destruction of the choir and presbytery, the whole church in its great length lies open to the view, but in the middle ages it was crossed by three stone screens. The first partition, called the rood screen, crossed the middle alley between the seventh pair of pillars, counting from the west door. It had two openings, between which stood an altar. Over the altar, on a beam which topped the screen from pillar to pillar, was a great cross or rood. This screen formed the east end of that part of the church which was assigned to the lay brothers. On the right hand and on the left, this sanctuary was shut off from the aisles by walls, which ran along the inner side of the pillars, making a long narrow chapel, with the stalls of the lay brothers set against them. Thus the pillars were hidden in the aisles, an observer at the west door seeing only the capitals and upper portions of them above the walls. The second partition, called the choir screen, crossed the tenth pair of pillars, and a door in the middle of it gave access to the choir. The space between these two screens, called the retro-choir, was intended especially for aged and convalescent brethren from the infirmary. There was probably a great bench for them against the back of the rood screen. In the midst of the retro-choir, between the eighth and ninth pairs of pillars, stood two altars, one on the north dedicated to St. Mary, and the other on the south dedicated to St. Bernard. The reredoses of these altars made a screen between the ninth pillars, having a doorway between them. In this passage, between the altars of the saints, three abbots were buried, in the fifteenth century. From the top of the two reredoses to the top of the choir screen, a loft was built, called the pulpitum, extending from the ninth and tenth pillars on the north to the ninth and tenth pillars on the south, and on the north side carried out over the aisle. Here, over the aisle, stood the choir organ.