The Cathedral Church of Oxford Author:Percy Dearmer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: creation of a long and chequered history an attraction peculiarly its own. Yet the same bluntness of aspect which impresses one in the spire is the leadin... more »g characteristic of the interior also. Only in 'this case the effect is not part of the original plan, but is due to the destruction by Wolsey of the three Western bays. Things must have seemed far worse before the new western bay added twenty feet to the nave, and brought the church right back to the cloister around Tom Quad, for though it only serves as an ante-chapel, it yet helps considerably to break the enclosed appearance, which must have been almost oppressive before. As it is, Christ Church is the smallest of our cathedrals : for even with the new ante-chapel it measures but 175 feet in length. Instead of being of the usual cruciform plan, it is now almost square, -- in fact, the length from the reredos to the organ-screen is 132 feet, while the breadth across from the Latin Chapel to St. Lucy's Chapel is 108 feet. The church is made up of the shortened nave with its two aisles, and ante- chapel, the central tower, the north transept with its one aisle, the south transept, and the eastern half of the church, which itself contains no less than six divisions, -- the choir, with its two aisles, the Lady Chapel on the north, and the Latin Chapel (or St. Catherine's) on the north again of that, while on the south is the small chapel of St. Lucy. If the unusual appearance of the cathedral is partly due to Wolsey's destruction, it is partly due also to its being used as a college chapel, and partly to the fact that in general plan, and to some extent in detail, it is Ethelred's design, commenced seventy years before the great developments of Norman architecture began. Ethelred himself probably only completed the ch...« less