Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/81

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staircase with richly carved doorway. The rood screen was also built now, on which was an altar served by the chaplain daily at 5 a.m. "after the first stroke of the bell which is called Daybelle." It is said that this bell is still rung daily from Lady Day to Michaelmas, but whether at 5 o'clock deponent sayeth not. The Lincoln daybell rang at 6. To reach this rood loft there is an octagon turret with a staircase on the south side at the junction of the nave and chancel. The south porch has also a staircase to the upper chamber, and the north porch has two turreted staircases, probably for the ingress and egress of pilgrims to the sacred relics kept there. Besides this there were at least five chantries attached to the church; the latest of these were the fifteenth century Corpus Christi chapel along the north side of the chancel, and the contiguous "Hall" chapel which dates from the fifteenth century. There is a good corbel table all along the aisles outside, and the west front is very fine and striking.

But the great glory of the building is the steeple. We have seen that the nave runs up to the large eastern piers of the tower, and the aisles run on past each side of it as far as the western piers, and so with the tower form a magnificent western façade, examples of which might even then have been seen at Newark, which was begun before Grantham, and at Tickhill near Doncaster.

The tower, one of the finest bits of fourteenth century work in the kingdom, has four stages: first, the west door and window, both richly adorned with ballflower, reminiscent of the then recent work at Salisbury, to which North and South Grantham were attached as prebends. Then comes a stage of two bands of arcading on the western face only, and a band of quatrefoil diaper work all round. In the third stage are twin deep-set double-light windows and then come two very lofty double lights under one crocketed hood mould. Both this stage and the last show a very strong central mullion and the fourth, or belfry stage, has statued niches reaching to the parapet and filling the spandrils on either side of the window head. Inside the parapet at the south-west corner is a curious old stone arch like a sentry-box or bell turret. The magnificent angle buttresses are crowned by pinnacles, from within which rises the spire with three rows of lights and lines of crockets at each angle running up 140 feet above a tower of equal height. It seems at that distance to