To the fourteenth century we owe the fine rood screen restored in 1848, but the next great period of building was the fifteenth century, when the Lady Chapel, with the chapels north and south of it, were built, and later in the same century the great choir was entirely re-erected.

This church appears to have stood till the fourteenth century, when it was entirely rebuilt and reclaimed, and all the lower part of the present church built, to be heightened and lengthened at the end of the fifteenth century when the clerestory and the chancel arcade were built, a new aisle wall set up on the north and the south aisle raised, the rood loft built or rebuilt.

Note externally the turret above the rood staircase, and the series of consecration crosses (12) on the E. and S. wall of the chancel; and in the interior observe (1) the carved oak cornice, (2) the screen (the upper part restored), (3) Norm. pillar (a survival of an earlier church) in the vestry, (4) old Bible of 1617.

There is a good specimen of a Caroline pulpit (1628), let into the N. wall, and reached by means of the rood stairway.

Within, note (1) in chancel, image brackets and defaced piscina; (2) rood loft stair and window.

Across the broad nave, nearly in the centre, is drawn a rood-screena piece of stonework that has often been compared to lace, but which gains nothing by the comparison.

On the chancel arch may be seen the gaps left in the stonework where the old wooden screen once stood, also the stone brackets for the rood-beam.

That one dragon was red as fire, With eyen bright, as basin clear; His tail was great and nothing small; His body was a rood withal.

To-morrow is Holy-rood day, When all a-nutting take their way; Within the wood a close doth stand, Encompass'd round on either hand With trees and bushes; there will I Despatch your marriage presently.

Its church of St. Gommarius is renowned for its magnificent proportions, its superb window tracery, and its wonderful rood-loftfeatures in which it has eclipsed in glory even the great cathedrals of Belgium, and which place it alone as a unique achievement of the art of the fifteenth century.

The omission of a chancel arch is a step towards the ideal simplicity of the late Perpendicular churches (e.g., St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich), running from east to west without break, but the large rood piers and reduced width and height of chancel make the pause demanded in so long a church.

Herein come ye no more, Till a child of a maid be born, And upon the rood rent and torn, To save all that ye have forlorn, lost.