The improvements effected before this appeal to the public was made are enumerated by Britton.  As has been intimated, the cost was defrayed by Dean Monk and the Chapter from their own resources.  The chief repairs and restorations were these:—­new roofs were put to the transepts and bell-tower; columns, mouldings, and ornaments in various parts of the church were renewed; several windows, till then blocked up with rubble, were opened and glazed, and in some cases the stonework made good; the pinnacles, spires, and shafts of the west front were carefully restored; two Norman doorways, which had been obscured for ages, were exposed to view.  The work in the choir included new stalls and seats, pulpit, and throne; an altar screen of clunch, filling up the lower part of the apse; and an organ screen, also of clunch, with an open parapet, and enriched with much diaper-work and many canopies, and adorned on the west face with large shields of arms,[17] very brightly coloured, charged with the heraldic bearings of the principal subscribers.  At first there were only four stalls on each side of the entrance to the choir; others were added, in front of the ladies’ pews, when Honorary Canons were created in 1844.  This organ-loft did not occupy the place of the former screen, which was where the monastic choir had always terminated, at the second bay west of the tower, but was placed under the eastern arch of the lantern tower.  The former screen was called by Rickman “a barbarous piece of painted wood-work.”  It was either sold, or taken by the contractors as a perquisite; it ultimately found its way into a little garden at Woodston, just across the river, where it was transformed into a summer-house, or arbour.[18]

Great admiration was universally expressed at the conclusion of this work.  It was esteemed a marvel of beauty.  Harriet Martineau, in her “History of England during the Thirty Years’ Peace,” thought the re-opening of the choir a matter of sufficient national importance to be recorded in her book.  She writes thus:  “A new choir of great beauty, was erected in Peterborough Cathedral during this period, and the church was made once more what it was before it was devastated by the Puritans.”  All must admire the enthusiasm and devotion which brought this restoration to a successful issue, although to the taste of the present day it would all appear cumbrous and heavy.

In the time of Dean Saunders (1853-1878) the choir roof was painted anew, and much valuable and important work was done towards securing the stability of the fabric, by underpinning some of the walls, and in other ways; but all the expense was defrayed out of the resources of the Dean and Chapter, and no public appeal was made for assistance.  Indications of the insecurity of the lantern tower had begun to appear, one or more fragments of the masonry having fallen from a great height; and for some years before the tower was condemned as unsafe, a wooden stage had been erected, above