Note 54 — Chapter V

The quire has but a single bay with a round apse, there are transepts, there is a nave of seven bays. At the west end this is flanked by towers and an aisle girdles the structure from one tower and back to the other, running all round the apse—for the transepts, which no longer project, are reduced very largely to sections of the aisles. In the sacristy may be seen remains of the arch between the south transept and the eastern chapel which extended it before it was cut back.

The interior is very striking from the unusual and pleasing combination of white and red. Bricks are exposed where are shafts and at the edges of the arches; white plaster covers walls and vaults. Many of the arches are round, but pointed ones are always used for the plain quadripartite vaulting. The windows are all single, some in groups of three, but they are numerous and wide enough to make the building extremely light. The blindstorey (triforium) is open to the church by arches about the same size as those that communicate with the aisles. Round the apse these two tiers of arches rest on shafts of granite, elsewhere stone is very sparingly used for capitals and a few other details. The blindstorey, itself vaulted above the vaulting of the aisles, forms a passage the whole way round the church, a groined gallery on two pillars carrying it from tower to tower, and wooden balconies across the transepts. (These look like sixteenth century work; can they have been erected when the transepts were cut back, perhaps at the Reformation?) By means of a simple archway over a road the blindstorey also communicates with the old Bishop's Palace to the eastward. The clearstorey has no passage along its windows, but round the apse there is an extra arcade between it and the blindstorey, which greatly improves the effect.

The quire and apse with the central space and one bay of the nave are higher in floor-level than the rest of the church, and underneath is a crypt whose vaulting rests on a row of square columns, and whose small windows open to the aisles.

Some of the fittings are extremely beautiful Renaissance work, especially the reredos with folding wings. This, it is said, a Dutch skipper was trying to smuggle through the Sound; on being detected he placed on it a ludicrously low value, hoping that the duty might thus be extremely light. Unfortunately, however, the Danish authorities preferred to purchase the work at the figure that its too clever owner had named. The worrying resourcefulness of customs house officials is no new thing.