"The Chapter House is the great climax of a visit to Southwell, its greatest and most glorious surprise… among Chapter Houses as a rose among flowers", so wrote Henry Thorold in his Shell Guide to Nottinghamshire (1984). The magnificent and delicate stone carvings are regarded as some of the finest examples of medieval craftsmanship existing today. They are based on close study of local hedgerows yet also contain green men and creatures both real and imagined. The building was modelled closely on that of York Minster and although considerably smaller it shares the same features of large windows and gravity defying vault unsupported by a central pillar.

The four blocks of choir stalls nearest the Pulpitum are the inspired work of Charles Henry Simpson, put in place in 1886. The bench heads have particularly fine wood carvings of foliage and animals in profusion reminiscent of the stone leaves of the Chapter House. Under the Pulpitum are six stalls for 'senior' clergy including 'Wolsey's stall', so called because Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York (1514-30) spent some five months in Southwell during the last year of his life. The stalls have some outstanding 14th century misericords, designed not only to assist weary clergy, who can lean on them whilst standing, but also to display intricately worked biblical scenes.

The four lower windows in the Quire are the work of the Parisian glass painter Jean Chastellian and were made in 1528 for the Temple church in Paris. After the French Revolution the church was sold. The windows were subsequently found in a pawn shop in Paris and presented to the Minster in 1818 by Henry Gally Knight, a Nottinghamshire squire, poet and antiquarian from Warsop in North Nottinghamshire. They show scenes from the life of Christ: his baptism, the raising of Lazarus, the entry into Jerusalem and the mockery of Jesus. In each a purple cloak suggests some hint of a royal personage is present in the actions portrayed in the stories.

The brass eagle lectern was made at Tournai in the Low Countries in 1503. It indicates the centrality of the world of God in Christian worship. It was originally the property of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. At the dissolution of the monasteries it was hidden in a lake and only rediscovered some 250 years later when the lake was drained. It was auctioned by the 5th Lord Byron, great uncle of the poet, and acquired for the Minster in 1805 by Sir Richard Kaye, then Dean of Lincoln.