stories as marked by the string-courses below the windows we find 50
feet given to the door and great window and then 20, 30, and 40 feet
stages, reaching to the top of the parapet. The reader will have
noticed the interposition of a 27 feet space among the thirties, and
the reason for this is worth explaining.

It is now known that the tower could not be built in line with the
centre of the proposed new nave because of the existence of a
filled-in pit or quarry at its north-west angle. But the builder was
rash enough to build the north-west buttresses beyond the edge of the
old excavation and resting on the looser material. The consequences
might have been foreseen. By the time the building had reached the
grouped windows the settlement or sinking was considerable and an
effort was made to remedy it, first by reducing the height of this
(the weakest story), by one yard and next by starting the courses
level once more. Five hundred years later and we find that whereas the
sinking is 7-1/2 inches near the ground level it is only 4 inches at
the windows, plainly showing that it had sunk 3-1/2 inches before the
remedy was applied and four inches since. The writer is informed by
the architect (Mr. J. Oldrid Scott) that all this angle was so full of
rents and cracks that (coupled with the decay of the stone, especially
in the buttresses) it was surprising that the whole had not fallen. A
curious disregard of what we look on as a natural sentiment is to be
noted in this connection, for the builders used a quantity of fine
sepulchral slabs from the churchyard as filling for the foundations.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE TOWER FROM BELOW.]

In magnificence of design the tower exceeds that of any other parish
church in England, the uppermost story being the richest in detail.