In draining the area of the church, in rebuilding the decayed piers, and in bringing up the north wall to the perpendicular, the restorers effected great and substantial improvements, but in lowering the floor to its original Norman level, and in rebuilding the apse as they believed it was first planned, they embarked on extensive operations which were by some regarded not only as unessential, but as going beyond legitimate restoration; in fact, as was pointed out by more than one, it was not unlike an attempt to restore the nave of Winchester Cathedral by clearing out first all the work of William of Wykeham. There was much to be said in favour of lowering the floor, but the building of the apse was open to considerable question, and there is but little doubt that had the restorers commenced the destruction of the east wall at the top, instead of at the bottom, and so discovered the ruins of the great traceried windows, they would have paused in their scheme; but the position of the fringe factory prevented this, and it was only many years after the ambulatory arcade of the apse had been completed that this discovery was made. The question of whether there ought to have been an apse according to Austin Canon rule was not properly considered, but when it was found, after the walls of Purgatory had been removed, that there were no traces of any foundations to the missing central piers, some doubt as to the correctness of the course they were following was necessarily suggested. It was then, however, thought to be too late to alter the plans, the most important part of the east wall having then been destroyed, and the result is that we now have a Norman apse of uncertain authority, crowned with a lofty traceried clerestory, which, though a clever architectural composition, is only a modern makeshift. In place of this, had the fifteenth century east wall been preserved, we should have had in the upper part the two great windows, much of the tracery of which still remains, and beneath them the reredos might have been renewed. In this case the eastern portion of Roger de Walden's screen, with its doorway, would have been saved, and Sir Walter Mildmay's picturesque monument been left intact, making altogether a more beautiful sacrarium, and a much more truthful representation of what had once been, than the doubtful restoration of the rude Norman apse.