.

Over these two arches is a bold cornice, which possibly once supported a
ceiling, and the blind storey above shows in each wall two pairs of
plain lancets with the impost-moulding continued as a string, and with a
passage behind. In the third storey, where again there is a passage, the
two windows in each wall have a third arch (also round) between them,
and alternating with these three arches are little lancets which have
been blocked as far up as the imposts, their shafts having been first
removed. A cornice supports the ceiling, and on the west side there are
also some rather inexplicable corbels.

The builders of this tower were certainly misguided in employing round
arches to support it, at a time when (as the choir shows) pointed arches
of considerable size were in common use, and it would seem that the
superior strength of the latter form was not yet fully realized. No
stronger specimens of that form are to be found, perhaps, than the
arches that support the two remaining sides. Their giant piers are
clusters of engaged cylindrical shafts with rounded hollows between, and
at each remodelled angle of the tower the two adjacent responds are
treated as one whole, presenting seven shafts almost on the same plane.
The bases, with their complex plinths and overhanging upper mouldings,
are over five feet high, and the capitals are polygonal, with small and
shallow mouldings, of which the lowest follows the form of the pier.
Slightly stilted, richly moulded, and of many orders, these arches are
so lofty as to leave no room for a blind storey above. Though the
windows here are set higher in the wall, their rear-arches reach down
nearly to the Transitional sill-level. Between the two windows in either
wall a shaft springs from an angel corbel at the string-course below the
sills, and runs up in a kind of groove, and these two shafts, with
another which springs from the junction of the two great arches, end
short of the present ceiling in semi-octagonal capitals, while on the
east wall, and at a lower level, there are more corbels. Indeed, from
the various corbels and shafts in this storey it would seem that the
level of the ceiling had been altered, possibly more than once, and
perhaps that it was destined to be altered again when the remodelling
should be complete. The present ceiling, flat and painted with good
effect, was put up by Sir Gilbert Scott.

=The Transepts.=--The length of either transept is 43 feet, and