The tower above the roofs, is of two stages, the upper, or bell chamber, and the lower or lantern opening into the church.  Below this are small windows with the lines of the old high-pitched roof visible above the present transept roofs, but in the nave and chancel the lines of the old roofs are now within the church, the clearstory having since been added.  Each face of the tower is divided, apart from the narrow angle buttresses, into six vertical divisions separated by thin projections of buttress form.  On the south and west the stair turret absorbs one of the outer divisions.  Each division is curved in plan in a curious way, which may be the perpetuation of a feature of the original design, but was more probably introduced or modified by the person who recased the tower in 1826.  That there was sculpture we know, for in 1709 ten shillings was paid for taking the images down from the steeple.  The smallness of the sum indicates that they were few in number, and if they occupied similar positions to those on the belfry stage of St. Michael’s, and the structure was as decayed as was the tower of that church it is probable that the cutting away of the niches may have suggested the curving of the surfaces especially as the tower would be thereby lightened.  As it is we cannot be certain of much else than that there were vertical divisions serving to emphasize the impression of height and that the openings were in the same positions as now.

[Illustration:  PLAN OF TRINITY CHURCH]

The spire blown down in 1665 had been in the previous ninety years five times repaired and repointed.  We cannot now say whether the original design was at all closely followed in the rebuilding, but its present likeness to St. Michael’s suggests doubts.  The lowest stage which takes the place of the octagon and may be an intentional imitation of it, has almost upright sides with two-light windows on the cardinal faces and panelled ones on the oblique sides, while the remaining stages correspond in number and partly in design with those of St. Michael’s.

In 1855 it was considered that the bells endangered the safety of the tower, and after recasting by Mears of London they were rehung in a timber campanile in the north churchyard.  Even now they cannot be pealed.

The deplorable refacings have left few features of interest on the outside.  Were Gothic architecture still a living and not merely imitative and academic art, one would welcome a complete renewal of all outside work—­not an imagined harking back to the work of the fifteenth century but showing the lapse of the centuries from the fifteenth to the twentieth as clearly as does the north porch the change from the thirteenth to the fifteenth.

[Illustration:  INTERIOR OF HOLY TRINITY, FROM THE WEST.]

CHAPTER III

THE INTERIOR

It is with a feeling of expectation followed by one of relief that we pass within the church, for restoration has there rarely the same excuse for its devastations as the action of wind and weather on the exterior too generously gives it, and this church is no exception to the general rule.