420 The Church of S, John the Baptist and S. Helen, Wroughlon, 



features which, if taken alone, would lead one to put it later, and 

 it is probable that the upper stage was not erected at the same 

 time with the rest. The walls of this part are unusually thin. 



The tower is of three stages divided by string courses with broad 

 splayed weatherings, at each of which there is a set-off; the lower 

 stage has deep plinth and base mould, the latter being stopped on 

 either side of the west door at the level of the springing. This 

 doorway has a pointed arch of two orders of chamfers which are 

 carried down the jambs ; above a moulded additional string course, 

 dividing it from the doorway, is a fine 3-light pointed window with 

 gpod Decorated tracery, which has been so thoroughly re-faced 

 that, but for the fact that the model proves the design to have 

 been the same in 1835 it might have been taken for new work. 

 The west wall below this string course is faced with freestone 

 ashlar. All other external facing of the tower is of rubble work. 

 Beyond a small loop opening in the south wall, the walls of the 

 middle stage are blank. The upper stage has, in each face, a 2-light 

 pointed window with two orders of chamfers on jambs and arch, 

 and one on the mullions and tracery, the latter of which is simply 

 arched and without cusps, but the heads of the lights are filled with 

 thin inserted sub-tracery above the stone louvres, and the apex is 

 pierced. There are no labels. There is the conventional embattled 

 parapet with cavetto cornice; the pinnacles are modern bub stand on 

 original bases. An octagonal stair turret on the south side starts 

 up in the angle formed by the aisle, and has exit doors into the 

 middle stage and out into the gutter of the nave roof at the level of, 

 the first string course ; above these openings it terminates in a 

 cornice mould and weathered roof of stone. The bottom doorway is 

 on the outside and all turret doorways have elliptical heads. Like 

 the other 14th century work here the tower has diagonal buttresses ; 

 these have two set-offs and are carried up to the top of the middle 

 stage where the string course is carried around them and the 

 upper weathering comes immediately above, No further material 

 alterations were made until about 1420, when the rebuilding of the 

 N. aisle and the N. chapel (which are under the same roof) took 

 place, and the only trace of what previously existed is the Norman 



