Præcentor Walcott has supposed that the two towers in Chichester
referred to in the "Annals of Dunstable" as having fallen during the
year 1210 were the two at the west end.

[Illustration: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL, ABOUT 1650.]

But taking Sir Christopher Wren's report with the discovery made by
Mr. Sharpe in 1853, quoted by Professor Willis, it would seem rather
that those two towers were the original central tower and that at the
south-west angle of the west front.

Wren in writing of the tower at the north-west, which had fallen about
1630-1640, said that it had not been built at the same date nor in the
same manner as the other then remaining to the south of the same
front. The upper part of the central tower itself had been built
perhaps during the second quarter of the fourteenth century or even
earlier. Consequently it seems probable that the two towers which fell
in 1210 were the original twelfth-century central tower and that of
the same date to the south of the west front. In Speed's map of 1610
both the western towers are represented as having small spires.

Hollar's print in the "Monasticon" shows what appear to be some
fifteenth-century buttresses to the north-west tower; but in
excavating for the foundations of the new north-west tower, now
completed, no traces of any projecting buttresses were discovered, so
it may be that it was the original twelfth-century tower which fell
about 1630, and the peculiar character of its masonry suggested the
remark to Wren when he said it so distinctly differed from its
companion.