ON THE PERPENDICULAR OF SOMERSET. 49 
great classes very readily present themselves, which I 
will now endeavour to trace out.* 
First Class, Taunton. I will first describe that which 
is the most usual, and which is employed in several churches 
of very great beauty, though I must,in my own mind, give it 
a place below either of the other two. At the same time I 
will promise in no way, by word or deed, to assault or mal- 
treat any person who may hold a contrary opinion. This type 
I will call that of Taunton, as being employed in the two 
stately steeples of that town, of which, as we all know, 
that of St. Mary Magdalen must, for height and magni- 
ficence, claim nearly, if not quite, the first rank in the 
county. The characteristic of this type, which seems 
principally to be found in the south, is that the height 
above the church is divided into numerous stages, and 
that a staircase turret at one corner, most usually the 
north-east, is combined with double buttresses at all the 
four corners, while all the pinnacles are of equal height. 
Of this type St. James at Taunton, Bishop’s Lydiard, 
Isle Abbots, and Huish Episcopi are noble examples. The 
two latter I only know from drawings ; but I can answer 
for the admirable beauty of the two first; anywhere else 
they would probably rank first among the towers of the 
distriet. It shows the wonderful wealth of Somersetshire 
that we have to place such beautiful structures in the 
lowest class of merit ; the lowest, of course I mean, among 
those which make any pretensions to architectural magni- 
fieence. St Mary Magdalen, at Taunton, is of this type, 
but it sins against the first law of tower-building, which I 
conceive to be that there should be a gradual increase of 
lightness and decoration towards the top. The lower parts 
*I am here working out more at length what I have already 
sketched in my History of Architecture, p. 386. 
1851, PART Ir. G 
