upward turn to meet the
corners. It is flanked by two lofty square turrets, which have been
compared with those on the west front of Tewkesbury. They have a shaft
at each angle, are pierced on each face with two round-headed openings
under a round arch, with a string below running round the turret, and
are surmounted by pyramidal stone caps ending in pommels and having a
rude pinnacle at each corner. The end of the aisle is set back, and
displays a window like the three above the door, but without the
dividing mullion; and above this a round-headed niche, doubtless once a
window that lighted the space over the aisle-vault; while a round arch
over this niche, and a little pointed arch on the buttress adjacent
westwards, carry a curious thickening of the masonry above. The
arrangement of the windows here breaks the continuity of the first
string-course, which, after crossing the main elevation, has to be
stopped and resumed at a lower level in order to pass beneath the
windows of the aisle. At the corner of the latter are more clustered
buttresses, terminating below the parapet, and above them rises a plain
gabled pinnacle (an addition, probably, of the fourteenth century),
while another buttress, rising from the inclined coping of the
aisle-wall, runs up the clearstorey.

The east side of the aisle has two more buttresses like those at the
corner, and consists of two bays, each containing a window like that at
the end. It is hard to say whether the moulded string or cornice below
the parapet is original, but the gargoyle which juts from it and the
parapet itself, with its cruciform piercings, are not earlier than the
fourteenth century. The roofs of the aisles in both transepts and in the
choir have been lowered, and it has been suggested that this was done at
the time when the Minster was fortified against the Scots, in order to
afford better standing-room for armed men,[42] and the various
battlements on choir and transepts were probably erected for the same
occasion. Here the round arches of the triforium have been built up, and
the clearstorey harmonizes with the more elaborate scheme of the choir.
The wall is divided into three bays by flat pilasters received in the
cornice, and each bay contains a round arch, pierced and glazed, between
two lower and narrower pointed arches, all resting on single detached
shafts. Between the buttresses runs a corbel-table, supporting a
battlemented parapet of Decorated character,