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Between the arches there rises a clustered shaft which reaches to the level of the highest points of the arches: here these shafts combine with an ornamented stringcourse which runs in a straight line along the entire front. The pinnacles on each side of the middle gable are at first square, then there are two octagonal stages, the uppermost pierced, and finally a short spire.
From eave and stringcourse and dripstone of the old castle the melting patches of dazzling snow sent down mimic showers of diamond drops, and the moisture thawed from them made dark stains upon the grey masonry.
The building is of the width of the choir and aisles together. The central bay has been recently fitted up for early celebrations of the Holy Communion. The junction of this addition with the original Norman apse is admirable, and should be specially noticed. Parts of the original external stringcourse of the apse can be seen.
The inner wall surface of the five lowest windows has been filled with elegant hanging tracery of fourteenth century date, the designs being all different. In some cases this tracery is placed just below the Norman stringcourse, but in others the stringcourse has been removed to make room for it.
He says they "deserve particular examination, not only because they are very early and fine specimens of cusped and traceried windows indeed, among the best in the kingdom but for a remarkable peculiarity in the jambs; whereof one side is Norman, with the square capitals to the jamb-shafts both within and without, and the other Early English, as are the arch-mouldings and hoods round the whole arches, which were probably semicircular at first, for at present the point cuts through a stringcourse inside.
There was never any ambulatory round the apse outside; we can still see, from the new building, portions of a stringcourse which was external, as well as other evidences that the apse was the end of the church. It is also known that there was a highway at the east end of the church, almost touching it.
Below these, and resting upon the long stringcourse that runs above the great arches, are sets of seven trefoil-headed niches, with a half-niche at each end. Four of these niches are pierced for windows, which have trefoils with pointed heads, though the trefoil heads of the niches themselves are round at the top. The three intervening niches contain figures.
F. Fecit Anno Gratiæ MCCCCL' occupies every arch and stringcourse of the architecture, and whose coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with his cipher and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are wrought in every piece of sculptured work throughout the building, seems so to fill this house of prayer that there is no room left for God.
The loftiest of the stages of this arcading has a sub-division with round arches; and the stage above the great stringcourse has round-headed trefoils so as to be in keeping with the row of similar arches in the gables; but with these two exceptions all the arches on the arcades of the tower are pointed and without cusps.
Below the triforium a stringcourse of chevrons runs all along. Between the choir bays and the apse is solid wall, rather longer than the distance between the central lines of adjoining piers.
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