to be superseded by the pointed arch, and the massive ornamentation
which marks the earlier style was displaced by the conventional foliage
that soon came to be very generally employed. Most wisely, however, the
Peterborough builders made their work at the west end of the nave
intentionally uniform with what was already built. Very numerous
indications of this can be seen by careful observers. The bases of the
western pillars, the change in the depth of the mouldings,
characteristic changes in the capitals in the triforium range, and
especially the grand arches below the transept towers, which are
pointed, but enriched with ornamentation of pronounced Norman character,
all point to the later date of this western transept.

At the west wall of the church all trace of Norman work disappears. The
arcade near the ground, the large round arch above the door, the great
west window and its adjacent arches (not, of course, including the late
tracery), are all of distinct Early English character. The whole of this
wall may be held to be an integral part of the west front, and not of
the transept which it bounds.

When we come to the most distinctive feature of the cathedral, the
glorious west front, we find we have no help whatever from the
chronicles. Nowhere is there the smallest reference to its building.
Other works raised by the Abbots of the period are named, but the noble
western portico is never once mentioned. Perhaps the rapid succession of
abbots after Acharius may account for this. The building must have
taken some years, and the credit of the whole cannot be given to one.
There were four Abbots after Acharius before the church was dedicated.
They were Robert of Lindsey (1214-1222), Alexander (1222-1226), Martin
of Ramsey (1226-1233), and Walter of S. Edmunds (1233-1245). During the
abbacy of this last the church was dedicated on the 4th of October 1237,