The tower is in two stages, a lofty lantern story having two transomed
two-light windows on each face and a shorter upper one having smaller
windows without transoms and a battlemented parapet. Large skeleton
clock-dials disfigure the windows of this story. Narrow buttress
strips on either side and between the windows run through and serve to
connect the stories. The north-east angle has an octagonal stair
turret carried up above the parapet. The other angles have narrow
buttresses running up to circular bartizans boldly corbelled out from
the battlements. This is an extremely unusual feature in
ecclesiastical architecture but is common on fortified structures. Of
the City gates, Gosford Gate had machicolated ones but not Spon Gate
adjacent to the church.

[Illustration: ST. JOHN BAPTIST.]

The spacing of the windows and buttresses of the south aisle and the
position of the large transept window show how the later changes were
effected. The three windows and the buttresses with niches and
canopies almost certainly belong to the part built by Walsheman after
1357. The two in the chancel aisle are recent insertions. The doorway
at the south-west corner occupies the position where indications
showed that an original door had existed. There is also a small
priest's doorway of which the jambs are ancient. The clearstory was
restored in 1861 "from sufficiently clear indications" in the remains
of the original windows. The whole of this part is worthy of careful
study and should be compared with the corresponding parts of Trinity
Church. Everywhere we see signs of individual thought and design
mainly directed to softening the rigidity of the horizontal lines of
the square-headed and transomed "Perpendicular" windows. The method of