It has been suggested that this was done in order to straighten the
north wall, which in the twelfth century had been built so that it
bent inwards towards the south.

The weathered and channelled backs of five of the buttresses are the
same date as those south of the nave; but the easternmost one has a
flat raking back like those to the north and south of the choir and
presbytery. The four western buttresses had pinnacles with
spirelets--now destroyed. The western one was square, the other three
octagonal. All these are earlier in date than the fifth one from the
west, this last one being probably the same in date, as it is in
detail, as those on the south side. The sixth one finishes plainly
with a square top. It may once have had a pinnacle, but none now
remains.

The parapet to the aisle chapels in the four western bays is plain,
with a weathered coping and string-course in which is some carved work
of late fourteenth-century date. The gables between the buttresses are
gone, as is the case on the south side; but traces of their old
copings remain. The four large three-light windows are the same in
design and detail, and were no doubt executed when the chapels
themselves were built. They have traceried heads with early types of
cusping of about the same date as, or a little later than, the rose
window in the east gable; but they are certainly thirty or forty years
earlier than those of the lady-chapel. The north window of the chapel
in the fifth bay is a modern insertion of the same character as in the
south aisle chapels of the nave. It probably, like them, contained a
fifteenth-century window, which was removed to satisfy the taste which
thought the present substitute the better thing. The detail of the two
orders of its outer arch is earlier than that of the windows west of