In the recent restoration the coping has been renewed, the shafts have been given separate bases once more and many of the most worn stones have been replaced by new ones carved in facsimile.”--(G. H. P.) This doorway resembles those on the Continent and shows the influence of the East. Freeman says: “The superb western portal at Rochester Cathedral is by far the finest example of this kind, if not the finest of all Norman doorways.” The Mayor and Corporation of Rochester still have the right of entry in their robes by this door, through which we now pass. Immediately we descend four steps into the =Nave=: “The nave, 150 feet long to the cross of the lantern, is Norman, as far as the last two bays eastward. If, as is most probable, it is a part of Gundulf’s work, it was, no doubt, a copy of the Norman nave at Canterbury; and we are thus enabled to judge fairly what the appearance of the metropolitan cathedral was in this part of it. Its architecture is plainer than that of the contemporary examples in France, though owing to its having been always destined for a wooden roof, the piers and the design generally are lighter than where preparation was made for a stone vault. The triforium is richly ornamented; and the arches open to the space above the side-aisles as well as to the nave, a peculiarity which both Rochester and Canterbury may have received from the church of St. Stephen’s at Caen, where the same arrangement may still be seen. Lanfranc, the builder of the Norman church at Canterbury, had been Abbot of St. Stephen’s. The clerestory windows above, like those of the aisles, are Perpendicular; and the roof seems to have been raised at the time of their insertion. This is of timber and quite plain. “In passing beyond the Norman portion of the nave to the Early English, of which nearly all the rest of the Cathedral consists, the strong influence of Canterbury is at once apparent. The double transepts, the numberless shafts of Petworth marble, and perhaps the flights of stairs ascending from either side of the crypt, recall immediately the works of the two Williams in the metropolitan church, which always maintained the closest connection with Rochester, her earliest daughter.”--(R. J. K.) At the end of the northern aisle we note the early Fourteenth Century doorway for the use of the parishioners of St. Nicholas’s altar. The lower end of the southern aisle terminates in a blind arcade of three arches. Each aisle end has also a round-headed Norman window. The great =West Window= is divided into eight lights separated into [Illustration: ROCHESTER: NAVE, EAST] [Illustration: ROCHESTER: CHOIR, WEST]