The great columns are precisely like those at Winchester, excepting that the three-fold group of shafts, which there occupies the lateral portion, is precisely repeated on the front and back faces, making a perfectly uniform group in all directions (Fig. 271). This arrangement produces great grandeur, owing to the noble group of shafts it carries up to the vaulting of the central space. The arches are boldly moulded, with rolls and hollows, and enriched with the chevron. The triforium, piers, and arches are of three orders; the lower one dividing into two arches on a centre shaft. The clerestory is usually of three unequal arches. The capitals are all of the cushion type; those to the great cylindrical columns being octagonal. The chevron is here freely used, and the doorways are magnificently rich. One most marked feature in this cathedral is, that its central space is everywhere vaulted. It is known that this was a subsequent work; but, in the nave at least, it appears equally clearly to have [Illustration: Fig. 270.--Part of Nave, Durham Cathedral.] been contemplated from the first, a portion of the transverse ribs having been built with the walls. In the transept, however, the evidence seems to be the other way, though I think the question has been hardly sufficiently investigated. The sister church at Lindisfarne, built almost on the same design, seems, from the views one sees of it, to have been vaulted from the first, or, at least, to have been so designed. Externally, a peculiarity occurs at Durham in the gabled roofing originally covering the aisles (Fig. 272). This does not now exist, but the evidences of it are indisputable. [Illustration: Fig. 272.--Durham Cathedral. Gabled roofing to the Aisles.] The awful grandeur of the interior of this cathedral, and its noble effect from without,--standing, as it does, on a rocky promontory nearly surrounded by the deep ravine of the river, and, as a quaint old writer says--“So envyroned with hilles, that he that hath seen the situation of this city hath seen the mapp of Sion, and may save himself a journey to the Holy Land,”--must ever cause it to rank among the grandest of our Mediæval remains: and its influence seems to have been proportioned to its merits; for, as Sir Francis Palgrave tells us, it “became the normal model of ecclesiastical architecture throughout the ancient diocese of Aidan and Finan, far beyond the Tweed.”