The cathedral, up to this period, had been a Norman and transition Norman building. In 1221, on St. Andrew’s Day, during a great storm, the two “lesser towers” of Worcester fell. There is no evidence that the Norman nave terminated in western towers; and Professor Willis has suggested that these “lesser towers” may have flanked the Norman choir of Worcester, like those still remaining at Canterbury. Their fall may have injured the choir, and the ruin thus effected may have assisted the determination of the Bishop and Convent to expend the wealth which was still pouring in before the shrine of St. Wulfstan, in the erection of a more sumptuous church. At any rate, in 1224 the existing choir and Lady-chapel were begun; Bishop William of Blois laying the foundations of the new work of the east front; (_novum opus frontis_[61]). In 1281 the sacrist of the monastery received from the executors of Nicholas of Ely, Bishop of Winchester, a sum of sixty marks, the Bishop’s legacy toward the “rebuilding of the tower,”--no doubt the central tower of the cathedral,--which was not, however, effected for nearly a century, (1374). In the meantime, the Norman nave was partly removed and rebuilt. Bishop Cobham vaulted the north aisle of the nave between 1317 and 1321; and in 1377 Bishop Wakefield vaulted the nave itself. II. These dates will assist us in examining the existing cathedral. Of ST. WULFSTAN’s Church, begun as we have seen, in 1084, the crypt, which extends at present under the choir and aisles, is the only certain relic. But portions of Norman work, belonging, according to Willis, to the first three quarters of the twelfth century, remain in the nave, at the western end of the choir, and in the walls of the great transept. The two westernmost bays of the nave are transition Norman, and there is Norman work of the same period (the last quarter of the twelfth century) in the great transept. The choir, retro-choir, and Lady-chapel, with the choir-aisles and the eastern transepts, are _Early English_, and were commenced in 1224. The nave, with the exception of the two western bays, is of later date, _Decorated_, (1317-1327,) on the north side; and Decorated with a strong tendency to Perpendicular (_circ._ 1360?) on the south. The central tower is also Decorated, and was no doubt the tower for which the legacy of Bishop Nicholas of Winchester (1281) was intended. The cloisters are Perpendicular.