Thus was the new choir completed, in the sixth year after the burning of Conrad's. This part of the cathedral will be peculiarly interesting to the architectural student, owing to the curious mixture of styles, which enables him to compare the Norman and Early English characteristics side by side. A striking feature in the aspect of the building, as seen from the choir, is the remarkable inward bend with which the walls turn towards one another at the end of the cathedral. The choir itself is peculiar in the matter of length (180 feet--the longest in any English church), and the lowness of the vaulting. The pillars, with their pier-arches and the clerestory wall above are said by Willis to be without doubt the work of William of Sens: but the whole question as to where the French William left off and his English namesake began is extremely uncertain, as there can be no doubt that William of Sens had fully planned out the work which he was destined never to complete, and it is more than probable that his successor worked largely upon his plans. We are on safer ground when we assert that the new choir was altogether different from the building which it replaced. The style was much more ornate and considerably lighter: the characteristics of the work of the Williams are rich mouldings, varied and elaborately carved capitals on the pillars, and the introduction of gracefully slender shafts of Purbeck marble. Gervase, in pointing out the differences between the works before and after the fire, mentions that "the old capitals were plain, the new ones most artistically sculptured. The old arches and everything else either plain or sculptured with an axe and not with a chisel, but in the new work first rate sculpture abounded everywhere. In the old work no marble shafts, in the new innumerable ones. Plain vaults instead of ribbed behind the choir." "Sculptured with an axe," reads rather curiously, but Professor Willis points out that "the axe is not quite so rude a weapon in the hands of a mason as it might appear at first sight. The French masons use it to the present day with great dexterity in carving." The mouldings used by Ernulf were extremely simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow class of notched ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration but may be observed also in the indiscriminate employment of round and pointed arches. This feature, as Willis remarks, "may have arisen either from the indifference of the artist as to the mixture of forms or else from deliberate contrivance, for as he was compelled, from the nature of his work, to retain round-headed arcades, windows, and arches, in the side-aisles, and yet was accustomed to and desirous of employing pointed arches in his new building, he might discreetly mix some round-headed arches with them, in order to make the contrast less offensive by causing the mixture of forms to pervade the whole composition, as if an intentional principle."