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The church of Remigius ended in an apse, of which the foundations are now under the stalls about the middle of the choir. It probably had two towers at the west end, and possibly a central tower as well. The church of St. Mary Magdalene was swept away to clear the site, and a chapel at the north west end of the new building allotted to the parishioners in compensation. Like the Taj at Agra it was seventeen years in building, and its great founder died, May 4, 1092, a few months before its completion. This was in the reign of Rufus, a reign notable for the building of the great Westminster Hall.

Gateway of Lincoln Castle.

LINCOLN CASTLE

BISHOP ALEXANDER

The wide joints of the masonry, and the square shape of the stones, and the rude capitals of the pilasters are distinctive of Remigius’ work. Bloet succeeded Remigius, and during his thirty years he did much for the cathedral staff, but not very much to the fabric. His successor, Bishop Alexander, 1123, was a famous builder, and besides the castles of Sleaford, Newark and Banbury, the first two of which Stephen forced him to give to the Crown, he built the later Norman part of the west front, raising its gables and putting in three doors and the interlaced arcading above the arches of Remigius. He also vaulted the whole nave with stone, after a disastrous fire in 1141. There had been a previous fire just before Alexander was consecrated Bishop in 1123, of which Giraldus Cambrensis, writing about 1200, says that the roof falling on it “broke the stone with which the body of Remigius was covered into two equal parts.” This richly carved and thus fractured stone you may see to-day, where it is placed close to the north-west arch of the nave and north aisle. Bishop Alexander’s work is richer than that of Remigius, and the shafts and capitals of his west doors are beautifully carved. In these, according to Norman custom, hunters are aiming at the birds and beasts in the foliage. This is best seen in the north-west doorway. King Stephen came to Lincoln in 1141, the year of the fire, and it was there that, after a fierce fight which raged round the castle and cathedral, he was taken prisoner and sent to Bristol, but in the following year terms were arranged between him and the Empress Maud, and he was crowned at Christmas in Lincoln cathedral. After that date Bishop Alexander carried forward his work on the cathedral without intermission till his death in 1047, putting in the central western gable and the two gables over the arcading, vaulting the whole west front with stone, and adding the little north and south gables against the towers and the Norman stages of the towers, of which the northern tower was a little the highest, but looked less high because the south tower had its angles carried up higher than the walls of the square.