Page:County Churches of Cornwall.djvu/193

 THE CHURCHES OF CORNWALL 159 tower and spire. Ground-plan, exclusive of tower, is 75 ft. by 48 ft. Earliest part of church, which may be assigned to E.E. period, is the tower, origin- ally a plain but well-built structure early in the 13th cent, of two stages, and apparently crowned with low, broached spire. On W. side there are 3 low buttresses that reach up about two-thirds of first stage. Probably these are all of later work than tower itself; at all events, this is the case with centre one, for there are indications of head of a blocked-up window above it. There are lancet lights in 1st and 2nd stages of N. and S. walls of tower, and in upper stage of W. wall. Angles of low broached spire rising from an elementary 3rd stage can be detected on close examination both on W- *? and S. sides. A remarkable feature of the tower — **» which fully accounts for its somewhat exceptional k shape and construction — is that it was built over a <«* right of way. There was a public footpath that ^ passed beneath this tower, through N. and S. open H ^ archways, until restoration of 1878-9, when the- ; ; way was closed and doors supplied to these two^i tower entrances. This tends to prove that the i* e c. 1200 church was an extension to W. of its £ * Norm, predecessor. The result of such an ar- rangement as this was that there could be no archway from tower into nave, merely a some- what mean-looking doorway, with square light into ringing-chamber above it. On W. front of tower are the weather mouldings of acutely pitched