Page:St. Botolph's Priory, Colchester (1917).djvu/27

Rh plain brick orders, but has had jamb-shafts and capitals like those in the middle doorway. The wall surfaces between the doorways are treated with single shallow arched panels, and above the doorways two tiers of interlacing semicircular arches of Roman brick ran across the front continuously between the flanking towers. The head of the middle doorway breaks into the lower tier of arches, being included under a gabled weathering of brick, against which the sills of the arcade are stepped. In the upper arcade the central compartment, and the second on either side of it, are pierced with small windows which lighted the gallery by which the triforium passage was returned across the west end of the nave, and there is a large window, lighting the triforium of the south aisle, over the south doorway, a feature which was doubtless repeated over the north doorway.

Immediately above the upper arcade ran a roll-moulded stone string course, which mitred with the label of a large circular window in the middle of the front. This window had an outer order of chevron ornament, and several stones of its inner order remain, showing the rebate for the wooden frame which held the glazing; such evidence as is left suggests that the window was not filled with wheel tracery in stone, but had its glass secured by iron stanchions and cross bars, like the window in the south-east transept of Canterbury Cathedral.

On either side of the round window was a tall single light with engaged shafts in the outer order, and chevron ornament on the arch: the inner order had a plain angle roll in head and jambs. These three windows lighted the west end of the nave, and the clearstory passage was returned, at a considerably lower level than on the north and south sides, below their sills.

The wall surface of this stage of the front is broken over the position of the south doorway by three tiers of small arched recesses, two in the lowest tier, three in the middle tier, and two in the uppermost, these last being of such low proportions as to be nearly circular. There is also at this level a small opening which gives light to the stair which led from the clear-story level to the nave roof. A brick string course marks the top of the stage, and above this only a small piece of walling is left, enough to show that a continuous arcade of shallow semi-circular headed recesses ran across the front at the base of the west gable of the nave. Of the treatment of this gable no evidence survives.

Very little can be said of the design of the flanking towers. Each had a stair leading to the triforium gallery in the western