Robert of Cricklade spent much labour upon the present structure, tower, nave, transepts, and choir; and the works were far enough advanced in 1180, under prior Philip, for St. Frideswide’s first translation. Then, we presume, the fire of 1190 gave occasion to some re-constructions, and let in Transitional Architecture, of which something has to be said here. The term “transitional” seems to mean change or progress in a style (as from the round to the pointed arch in Gothic-Romanesque), where principles and rules are adhered to; not attempts to combine incongruous styles. England is full of transitions, through Norman to Early English, to Decorated, and so on; and they seem natural, and not lawless or contradictory. But the Roman way of encrusting their own great vaults and arches with Greek lintels and pediments, constructively useless, is a different and worse thing--just as bad as the Baroque or Fancy Renaissance. Still, a mixture of pure elements is at all events a pure mixture; and in Christ Church the Romanesque, Norman, and Decorated features are all of the best. The north-east walls and turrets might remind one of the Cathedral of Mainz or of Trier; while the Chapter-house door is fine Norman, and the Early-Decorated windows excellent in their way. It was just at this time of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when Northern builders were eliminating all traces of the Greek or trabeated structure, that the new or pointed arch began to present itself, and be welcomed here and there, just for its beauty’s sake. In Christ Church the arches of the nave, and other principal ones, are round, but two of the four which carry the tower are pointed; the greater supporting power of the latter form may have been already observed. The ancient interior must have been one of considerable beauty from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, when Wolsey destroyed three bays of the west end of the nave, reducing it to one-half its original length; and probably his name must also be associated with the lowering of all the roofs. If he executed the beautiful choir-vaulting, that is no small merit to balance these destructions; but it is questioned. The curious treatment of the side arcades should be noticed; the solid pillars of the twelfth century have been ingeniously divided in their thickness; the halves facing the aisle have been left in their natural proportions, while those which face the central nave have been raised so as to embrace the triforium stage.[252] The upper stage of the Cathedral tower with its spire, twice since rebuilt, belongs to the thirteenth century, like the chapter-house; and just within that century (1289) is a second northern aisle, built as a Lady Chapel, and containing a new shrine of St. Frideswide. The curious wooden structure at present existing is really the watching-chamber of the shrine erected in the next century, and is placed on the donor’s tomb in all probability, instead of the saint’s.