; it was only after many days and nights of
incessant labour, that they felt sure that the sinking of the tower was
arrested and that the new work was holding up the weight.

In 1875 it was discovered that the south-west clerestory was beginning
to crumble away. Lord Grimthorpe had this shored up at his own expense.
A new committee was soon after this appointed, and in March, 1877, a
faculty was granted to this committee "to repair the church and fit it
for cathedral and parochial services." The first Bishop, Dr. Claughton,
who up to this time had been Bishop of Rochester, choosing the northern
of the two parts into which his diocese was divided, was enthroned as
Bishop of St. Albans on June 12th, 1877, and on the following day the
restoration of the nave was begun. The church was in a very bad state:
the weight of the roof and injudicious repairs had thrust the clerestory
walls about forty inches out of the vertical plane. There was much
controversy at the time as to what should be done, and in the middle of
it Sir Gilbert Scott died, in March, 1878. In May, however, the roof
having been lifted, the leaning walls were forced up into a vertical
position by hydraulic pressure. Some of the restorers were in favour of
retaining a flat roof; others advocated putting on a high-pitched one
again, raising its ridge to the height of the original Norman roof, as
indicated by the weather marks on the tower. Fortunately the latter
course was adopted; fortunately because the church, seen from the
outside, lacks height in proportion to its length, and the ridge of the
roof now visible above the parapets has given it some of the extra
height it so much needed. The subsequent raising of the transept and
presbytery roofs on the other three sides of the tower was necessitated
by the raising of the roof of the nave.

Lord Grimthorpe drew up a list of "symptoms of ruin," twenty-two in
number, which it would take too much space to reproduce here; but unless
his account is exaggerated, it would seem that scarcely any part of the
building save the tower could be looked on as secure. He applied for a
new faculty which would give him unlimited power to "restore, repair,
and refit the church." This faculty was granted, and he exercised his
powers to the full; and as a result, though the church has been made
sound and secure, probably for many centuries to come, yet many of its
most interesting features have been destroyed, the most terrible dam