of Central Tower 84 "
Length of Side of Western Tower (square), exterior 31 "
Height of Western Tower 95 "
Length of North Porch, N. and S., interior 15 "
Width of North Porch, E. and W., interior 14 "
Length of South Porch, N. and E., interior 6 "
Width of South Porch, E. and W., interior 7 "
Length of Vestry, N. and S., interior 15 "
Width of Vestry, E. and W., interior 14 "
Length of Baptistery, E. to W., interior 18 "
Width of Baptistery, N. to S., interior 19 "

AREA 10,725 sq. feet.

CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

[Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, FROM THE BRIDGE.]

CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

On the promontory washed on the one side by the slow stream of the
Dorset Stour, and on the other by the no less sluggish flow of the
Wiltshire Avon, not far from the place where they mingle their waters
before making their way amid mudflats and sandbanks into the English
Channel, stands, and has stood for more than eight hundred years, the
stately Priory Church which gives the name of Christchurch to a small
town in the county of Hants. The massive walls of its Norman nave, its
fifteenth-century tower, and its great length--for, from the east wall
of its Lady Chapel to the west wall of its tower, it measures no less
than 311 feet--make it a conspicuous object from the Channel, especially
after sundown, when its form, rising above the low shore of Christchurch
Bay, is silhouetted against the sky. It is one of the finest churches
below cathedral rank that is to be found in England. It is a perfect
mine of wealth to the student of architecture, containing examples of
every style from its early, possibly Saxon, crypt to the Renaissance of
its chantries. Here we may see the solid grandeur of Norman masonry in
the nave, with its massive arcading and richly-wrought triforium; the
graceful beauty of the Early English in its north porch and in the
windows of the north aisle of the nave; the more fully developed
Decorated in the windows of the south aisle of the same; and
Perpendicular in the tower and Lady Chapel.

The crypts beneath the north transept and the presbytery may have
belonged to the o