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Outside there are all the unmistakable features of Saxon work the ponderously thick walls, becoming thinner in the upper parts, the "long and short" method of arranging the coigning, and the double windows divided with a heavy baluster as at Wharram-le-Street in Yorkshire, Earl's Barton in Northamptonshire, and elsewhere. Next in age and importance to St.

The opening between the tower and the nave is an almost unique feature, having a Moorish-looking arch of horseshoe shape resting on plain and clumsy capitals. The name Wharram-le-Street reminds us forcibly of the existence in remote times of some great way over this tableland.

Against this background the outline of the church of Wharram-le-Street stands out in its rude simplicity. On the western side of the tower, where the light falls upon it, we can see the extremely early masonry that suggests pre-Norman times.

Lashing rain, driven by the wind with sudden fury, pours down upon the hamlet lying just below, but leaves Wharram-le-Street without a drop of moisture. The widespread views all over the Howardian Hills and the sombre valley of the Derwent become impressive, and an awesomeness of Turneresque gloom, relieved by sudden floods of misty gold, gives the landscape an element of unreality.

Above the eastern side of the valley, where the Derwent takes its deep and sinuous course towards the alluvial lands, the chalk first makes its appearance in the neighbourhood of Acklam, and farther north at Wharram-le-Street, where picturesque hollows with precipitous sides break up the edge of the cretaceous deposits.