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CHICHESTER AND VICINITY 33
rattles!" he indecently capered about. Dean Ryves (p. 42), who tells the story, adds the well-merited sneer, " Marke what music it is lawful for a Puritan to dance to.")
During the fifteenth century the beautiful stone spire rose over the low tower in the centre of the church; the total height is but 277 feet, but it is a welcome landmark from the Downs and over the sea. About contemporary is the detached bell tower built of greenish sandstone from near Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, which Camden says, probably correctly, was originally quarried for one Ryman to crenellate his house at Apple-dram hard by (p. 49). It is a heavily buttressed square tower, the upper part octagonal, resting on extremely substantial squinch arches of three orders each, and with a pinnacle in each corner.
Thus was completed the great Church, unusually planned in so many ways—the five aisles, the four towers, the wandering cloisters, the far detached presbytery shafts, are all looked for elsewhere in vain. In other respects the irregularities of the building are great; not a straight line nor a right angle does it contain; an extraordinary series of bends is revealed to whoso stands at the west door and looks straight up the axis of the building. To mask outside the bending of the nave walls the thirteenth-century tref oiled corbel-table that carries the clearstory parapet is supplemented on the south by a sloping set-off, for here the wall is convex; on the north the corbel-table is doubled, and the lower one gradually sinks into the concave walling. For these irregularities all kinds of learned explanations have been given. The true one is apparent to any one who has realised the spirit of mediaeval times; it was a rough-and-
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