mains
in a state of dilapidation: to the other has been added a square tower,
of rather elegant proportions, surmounted by a small crocketed pinnacle,
the workmanship probably of the fourteenth century. The rest of this
part of the church is as it was first built, except that the great
arches of entrance are entirely blocked up. The whole is of extreme
simplicity, and vies in that respect with the same portion of the
adjoining church of the abbey of St. Stephen; the different members of
the two being nearly the same, though disposed in a dissimilar manner.

The central tower of the church of St. Nicholas is square and small, and
so low as to admit only a single tier of semi-circular-headed windows,
four on each side. It terminates in a ridged roof, and apparently, never
was higher; though, as far as may be judged from analogy, a greater
elevation was probably designed by the architect. Along the sides of the
church, immediately beneath the roof, runs a bold projecting cornice, of
antique pattern, formed of numerous horizontal mouldings; and, under
this, the corbel-table presents only a row of plain knobs, instead of
the monsters commonly found in Norman buildings. The clerestory,
throughout both the nave and choir, is filled with narrow arches,
alternately pierced for windows, and left blank. All these arches, as
well as the windows of the transepts and of the projecting aisles below,
are without the accompaniment of pillars or ornaments of any
description, excepting a broad flat moulding of the simplest kind, which
wholly encircles them. The disposition of the windows in the lower part
of the nave, differs from that of those above, in their being separated
from each other by shallow buttresses, which hold the place of the blank
arches. A plain string-course also is continued the whole length of the
church beneath the windows, as in the west front. On the south side is a
door, the only one now in use in the church, which is entered by a very
noble Norman arch, composed of a great number of cylindrical mouldings,
arranged in three broad bands, but without pillars or capitals, and with
no other variation than that of size, and of the addition of the
billet-moulding to the outer row. The transome-stone of this arch is
unquestionably coeval with the arch itself, the sculpture of the masonry
being interwoven with it. Attached to the eastern side of both the
transepts, is a circular chapel, as in the churches of St. Georges, o