ARCHITECTURAL STYLES IN FORDINGTON CHURCH. 187 



impossible structures covering useless acres of area to no 

 purpose. Their plans, proportions, and sky-lines would have 

 been unmentionable, bewildering mazes of stone and mortar. 



For example, the founders and builders of each century or 

 period wanting to add some additions or commemorations to a 

 public or national structure, and at the same time not being 

 allowed to touch with their unholy hands any portion of it that 

 already existed, whether good, bad, or indifferent, without 

 discrimination ! Oh ! the utter nonsense of it all. What is bad 

 in taste and style and incongruous should not be tolerated or 

 perpetuated, but swept out of existence as soon as occasion 

 arises. There is no sanctity about that which is wholly bad, and 

 but little consideration should be given for age in such a case. 

 St. George's tower would not have existed to-day and " An 

 Essay on the Sequence of Architectural Styles " of a building 

 under the one roof would have been made impossible had their 

 tenets and such teaching prevailed. However, this is all by the 

 way. The tower proper is said to have been built by a family of 

 the name of Samways. A story goes that the late Sir George 

 Gilbert Scott so admired the proportions of it that he sent one 

 of his surveyors to measure it. There is no question, however, 

 that its site greatly assists and adds to its fine proportions. It 

 would not be for instance so commanding an erection set up at 

 Fordington Cross. 



To the ordinary observer it appears to be square on plan, but 

 this is not supported by measurements, its internal size being 

 1 2 feet by 1 3 feet. The walls are 4 feet thick ; two buttresses 

 having first and second plinths are set on each face. These are 

 carried up with three sets of Ham Hill stone weatherings and a 

 necking, and terminate at the springing of the arches to the 

 bell-chamber windows. Ham Hill stone pinnacles are then set 

 on the same diagonally, and carried up above the embattled 

 parapet, passing through a bold necking at its base. They are 

 reduced and ornamented on their angles with thorn crockets. 

 Whether (as has been suggested) the idea of crockets originated 

 with the holy thorn of Joseph of Arimathea, I leave my readers 



