The west front which he rebuilt, though not altogether satisfactory, yet is greatly superior in design to his subsequent work at the south and north ends of the transept. These originally had corner turrets, octagonal in plan; these turrets were pulled down and square ones, finished by pyramidal caps, put in their place. The entire south front of the transept was pulled down and rebuilt, and a new window consisting of five lancets occupying its whole width inserted. The central light rises high into the gable and above the level of the inner ceiling. The lancets on either side are intermediate in height between the central and side ones when they are seen from without, but when seen from within the tops of all are of the same height, as they could not be raised above the level of the ceiling. The parts of the three middle lancets seen from without above this level are backed up with black felt across the ceiling, and their upper parts light the space between the ceiling and the high roof. This window is a feeble imitation of the "Five Sisters" of York, and is utterly out of place in the narrow transept at St. Albans; but bad as this south window is, the one at the north end of the transept is worse. Here Lord Grimthorpe inserted a circular window, the design being such as a child might make who was given a sheet of cardboard with a large circle drawn on it, which he was requested to cover symmetrically with a number of half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences. Another piece of unnecessary alteration was the destruction of the slype at the south end and the re-erection of its disjointed members as curiosities in the new work, its western doorway, with an added order, having been let into the centre of the south wall of the transept, and the arcading placed in two different positions.
[Illustration: THE ARCADE IN THE SLYPE BEFORE ITS REMOVAL.]
More satisfactory is the work in the Lady Chapel and the space sometimes called the antechapel; here the old carving had been terribly mutilated by many generations of schoolboys, and the new work which has been put in is good of its kind, and distinctive in its treatment. Lord Grimthorpe vaulted the Lady Chapel in stone. Much other work was done by him in various parts of the building. He rebuilt the clerestory windows of the presbytery and some of those in the nave; introduced windows into the blank walls at the western part of the nave, both on the north and south, for which he deserves commendation, as the original reason for no windows having existed here was only that the monastic buildings, now destroyed, abutted against the south aisle of the nave, and the Church of St. Andrew stood on the north side; when this church was pulled down a plain wall was built, and the thrust of the roof had forced this and the original wall on the south side outwards, after the buildings which had acted as buttresses had been removed.