t. Peter, at Northampton, said to have been
erected by Simon de St. Liz, during the reign of William the Conqueror,
is encircled at the height of the clerestory by a row of small arches,
similar in their proportions and decorations to those at Bieville; but
they are there continued in an uninterrupted line round the building,
while at Bieville they occupy only a comparatively small portion of it.
In the nave of this latter church, they are disposed regularly in
triplets, the central one only pierced for a window, and each three
separated by a flat Norman buttress.

The western front, represented in _plate fifty-eight_, is divided by
plain string-courses into three stories of irregular height: the
basement contains only the door, which is entered by a richly-ornamented
arch, (see _plate fifty-nine, fig. B_.) surmounted by a broad
drip-stone, decorated with quatrefoils, and terminating at each end in a
human head of classical character. The lowest moulding of this arch is
considerably more flattened than the upper, a peculiarity that is
likewise observable in the interior arch to the great door-way at
Castle-Acre Priory, in Norfolk.[116] In the second story are six arches,
supported by eight pillars, with capitals and bases of ordinary
character: even these, contiguous as they stand, are divided into two
equal sets, by the intervention of a flat space in the centre, so
narrow, as to wear the appearance of a pilaster. Here, too, as in the
nave, the central arch of each compartment is alone pierced for a
window.--The upper story has only a single window, precisely resembling
those below, but flanked on each side by a circular one, similar to that
in the front of the neighboring chapel of the _Delivrande_:[117] or, if
a comparison be sought among Norman edifices in England, to those in the
tower of Norwich cathedral;[118] in the same part of the church of St.
James, at Bury St. Edmunds;[119] and in the east end of the church of
the Hospital of St. Cross.[120] In point of general character, the
western front of the church of Bieville may not unaptly be compared with
that of the chapel of the _Delivrande_, or of the hospital of St.
Leonard, at Stamford, as figured by Carter.[121] The tower of the church
at Bieville is well calculated to serve as a specimen of the towers of
the village churches, comprized in a circuit of twenty miles round Caen.
Among others, those of Soumont, Ifs, Soulangy, Potigny, and the Lower
Allemagne, to