Notes on the Churches. 



253 



Whilst on this part I would call attention to the very marked 

 evidence which exists in this Church of the floor having been laid 

 to a slope following- the natural level of the site — an expedient 

 frequently adopted in early structures. In this case the fall 

 was from north to south. The sill of the north door is 2ft. 6in. 

 above the present floor-level, and the rough appearance of the bases 

 of the older piers of the north arcade shows that the ground around 

 them has been lowered and the foundations exposed; whilst the 

 lower level at which the worked stone commences on the respond 

 indicates the probability that this slope was done away with when 

 the fifteenth century western arch was inserted. Before leaving the 

 arcades I may mention the arch carried across the south aisle at 

 the point where buttressed by the porch and forming a good 

 support to the arcade. 



The wall of the south aisle was raised and a two-light window 

 built in the added part, high up at the west end, at about the middle 

 of the fifteenth century. A corbel of the old roof of this aisle exists 

 in the arcade wall ; the three-light windows inserted in the south 

 wall are apparently of seventeenth century Gothic, and have square 

 heads. The square-headed two-light window in the east wall 

 without arch or cusping, is singular, but it has, I think, been 

 tampered with. 



I said that the door and east end and west windows of the north 

 aisle were thirteenth century work, but this is not the case with the 

 walls and the rest of the windows and on a first glance this part 

 presents somewhat of a problem, which I solve in the following 

 way :— when the beautiful fifteenth century tower was built the 

 north wall of the aisle was evidently re-built, for the tower plinth 

 is carried along this part, but the early window in the west end and 

 the north door were built in, for their label moulds indicate an earlier 

 date than those of the three other windows or than the plinth. It 

 will be seen also that the stone facing on the outside is cut round 

 the label terminals of the doorway and the latter are not worked 

 on the constructional stones in the usual way. The east wall of 

 this aisle was not re-built at this time. Here, too, are diagonal 

 buttresses which are later than the west window. The three 



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