CHEVET  , the

term employed in French architecture to distinguish the apsidal end of a church, in which the apses or chapels radiate round the choir aisle . The two earliest examples (11th and 12th century) are found in the churches of St Hilaire, Poitiers, and Notre Dame-du-Port, Clermont, where there are four apses . A more usual number is five, and the central apse, being of larger dimensions, becomes the Lady chapel . This was the case in Westminster Abbey, where Henry III. introduced the chevet into England; Henry VII.'s chapel is built on the site of the original Lady chapel, which must have been of exceptional size, as it extended the whole length of the present structure . In Solignac, Fontevrault and Paray-le-Monial there are only three, in these cases sufficiently distant one from the other to allow of a window between . The usual number in all the great cathedrals of the 13th century, as in Bourges, Chartres, Reims, Troyes, Tours, Bayeux, Antwerp and Bruges, is five . In Beauvais, Amiens and Cologne there are seven apsidal chapels, and in Clairvaux nine radiating but rectangular chapels . In the 14th and 15th centuries the central apse was increased in size and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as in St Ouen at Rouen .