It is clear that the general design had been laid down under Carileph, as the choir, transepts, and nave agree in their leading idea; so that, whatever influence the previous building experience of Flambard obtained during his holding the deanery of St. Paul’s or elsewhere may have had upon the details of his nave at Durham, we must award the honour of the scheme, as a whole, to Carileph’s architect, who had supplied him the design during his exile in Normandy. Both bishops were as far as may be from the _beau ideal_ of [Illustration: Fig. 269.--Plan, Durham Cathedral.] an unworldly ecclesiastic, but one would regret to attribute a work so noble to the unscrupulous and wicked agent of the oppressions of Rufus. In plan (Fig. 269), the church, being arranged in coupled bays, two such couplets are given to its choir and two to either transept (the latter much narrower than the former). The nave consists of three couplets, after which comes a single bay, and then the bay which represents the western façade; or, in other words, it consists of four couplets, the westernmost of which is disturbed by the substitution of a complex pier on either side to carry the towers, in the place of what would have been its round column. This seems an imperfection; for four couplets, clear of the tower bay, would appear a more perfect arrangement. The transept has only an eastern aisle. The eastern termination of the church is lost. It was apsidal, and probably with a circumscribing aisle. The dimensions of the entire building are not quite equal to some of those which we have reviewed, being probably at first about 430 ft. in length by 200 ft. from north to south of the transept. The width from centre to centre of columns is 40 ft. The bays of nave and choir, similarly measured, vary from 23 ft. to 26 ft. The piers are of prodigious size, the clusters and round pillars being respectively about 11 ft. and 7 ft. in diameter. The magnificent grandeur of the interior arises as well from the extreme nobleness of the design of these couplets of bays, as from their continuous use throughout the church. Nothing can exceed the noble simplicity and grandeur with which they are treated, nor the happiness of their proportion (Fig. 270). The main arcade assumes a much more commanding altitude than in most of the churches already described, occupying, what became in after-times its received proportion, of one-half of the height of the wall, the other half being pretty equally divided between the triforium and clerestory. [Illustration: Fig. 271. Durham Cathedral.]