llegiate services, and parochial accommodation was limited.
Towards the end of the thirteenth century, a very wide south aisle, a
parish church in itself, was built the full length of the nave, and
overlapping the chancel at the east end. The tower was left standing on
piers entirely within the west end of the new aisle. It may be added
that, where towers occur at the end of aisles, they seldom project
beyond the west wall of the nave, but open into the nave by an arch in
the north or south wall, as the case may be. Plans with two western
towers, as at Melbourne or St Margaret's at Lynn, are of very rare
occurrence; and, where they are found, the plan was probably designed on
more ambitious lines than those of the ordinary parish church.

Sec. 54. The plan in which the western tower is engaged within the
aisles--that is, where the aisles are brought up flush with the west end
of the church--is not very common. Still, instances occur in all parts
of England. At Grantham, the plan is deliberate. It was imitated, as has
been said, from Newark, where the side walls of the tower had been
pierced with arches as an after-thought. Newark, in turn, may have taken
the design from Tickhill in south Yorkshire; and the design at Tickhill
may have been taken from the early and unpretentious example at
Sherburn-in-Elmet. Grantham probably suggested other similar designs,
such as Ewerby, near Sleaford. Several of our finest late Gothic
churches, like St Nicholas at Newcastle, have plans in which the aisles
are continued up to the west face of the tower. The method affords full
development to the aisles, and, as at Sileby in Leicestershire, has an
imposing interior effect. Outside, however, the aisles crowd the base of
the tower too much, and the fine effect of a lofty, free standing tower
is lost. Sometimes aisles were extended westwards, so as to engage an
earlier tower, as at Sleaford, where the low tower and spire are almost
overwhelmed by a pair of wide fourteenth century aisles. At Brigstock
and Winterton, late Saxon towers have been left without alteration
inside aisles which have been brought westward in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. The nave of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, was much
widened in the fourteenth century, and a small tower and spire of
earlier date were brought entirely within the new nave, as happened in
the south aisle at St Mary's, Leicester, and were left without
sufficient abutment. As a consequence, the a