that the fall was inevitable."

Just before half-past one

"the spire was seen to incline slightly to the south-west,
and then to descend perpendicularly into the church, as one
telescope tube slides into another, the mass of the tower
crumbling beneath it. The fall was an affair of a few
seconds, and was complete at half-past one."

Such, briefly, is the record of the fall, which so admirably has been
related by Professor Willis, from whose work these extracts have been
taken.

Sir Gilbert Scott, [27] after the central tower had collapsed, was
consulted concerning its reconstruction. He examined the remains; and
by the great care his son Gilbert exercised in labelling and
registering all the moulded and carved stone that was discovered in
the debris, the new tower and spire was designed upon the pattern of
the old one. Old prints and photographs were used to help in this work
of building a copy of what had been lost. But this task could not have
been done had it not been that Mr. Joseph Butler, a former resident
architect and Surveyor to the Chapter, had made measured drawings of
the whole, which supplied actual dimensions that otherwise could not
have been recovered. These drawings had come into the possession of
Mr. Slater, the architect associated with Sir. G. Scott in the
rebuilding of the tower, and they enabled him

"to put together upon paper all the fragments with certainty
of correctness: so one thing with another, the whole design