building, was also in progress." [10] These remarks are of interest,
since about the end of the fourteenth century a beautiful wooden
reredos was built across the east end of the sanctuary. It was placed
just west of the feretory of S. Richard. In many old prints its
character is represented, and Dallaway gives some dimensions of it in
the long section he shows of the church as it was before the reredos
was removed (see page 2). The feretory no doubt had a reredos at this
point, but what the type of this earlier arrangement may have been it
is impossible exactly to tell. But the work which took its place was
evidently beautiful, as the many remains still in existence prove to
those who may examine them. Walcott [11] gives some interesting details
concerning this work. From the representations, descriptions, and
remains of it, it may be gathered that the whole was much carved,
niched, and canopied, and decorated in colour; and there is a note
extant showing that Lambert Bernardi in the sixteenth century repaired
"the painted cloth of the crucifix over the high altar." [12] This
reredos had a gallery across the top of it, from which the candles on
a beam over the altar could be lighted and a watch kept over the
precious jewels in S. Richard's shrine. The whole screen was made of
oak, and those old sketches and drawings, or prints, of it still
preserved, help dimly to show what had been its character. An old
letter in the British Museum refers to it as having the finest "glory"
above the high altar "we have ever seen." But this so-called "glory"
was an eighteenth-century production. Much of the reredos is still
hidden away unused in the chamber over the present library of the
church, and since its first removal it has travelled as far as London
in search of a friendly purchaser. In the chapter on Chichester in
Winkles's "Cathedrals" a view in the "presbytery," dated 1836, [13]
shows the reredos still in its place where it remained till after the
fall of the spire. There are in existence two drawings of considerable