14 PAPERS, ETC. 
East-Anglian towers, as far as I have seen them, are 
widely different from ours in Somerset, and, at the same 
time, hardly less widely different from one another. I 
could make out no such classes asthose which I have named 
the Taunton and Bristol types. And I should find it more 
easy to describe them negatively than positively, except that 
the large single belfry-window seems characteristie. Ineed 
hardly say how utterly contrary this is to all our own best 
examples. I never saw in Norfolk a large portion of a 
tower oceupied by a panelled fenestriform design, of which 
the apertures actually pierced for light and air were merely 
small portions. St. Peter Mancroft is covered with 
panelling ; but panelling which the windows cut through, 
not of which they form a part. I did not find the ele- 
gant stone-work between the mullions, or indeed any one 
of the marked Somersetshire characteristics. Nor is this 
to be attributed solely to a difference of material ; Wis- 
beach and Swaffham are elaborate structures of ashlar, and 
St. Peter Mancroft displays a greater amount of ornament 
than any Somersetshire tower I know ; yet they come no 
nearer to any of our western types than the flint steeples 
of Wymondham and Hingham. The distinguishing cha- 
racteristic of the Norfolk towers is a majestic bold- 
ness, which is most successful when it attempts nothing 
more ; the two utterly unornamented towers just men- 
tioned please the eye far more than the excessive 
enrichment of St. Peter Mancroft. But our Somersetshire 
towers, to a grandeur of outline hardly inferior—not at all 
inferior in the four grand examples, Wrinston, Wells, 
Glastonbury, and North Petherton—unite the utmost 
delicacy of design and execntion. The ornament of St. Peter 
_ Maneroft is not architectural ; there is no design about 
it; the tower is converted into a mere vehicle for dis- 
ee N vor (u 
