main compartments, each
division being marked by a small pinnacle, and the turrets by large
compound pinnacles. It is an interesting tower to ascend, the rents in
the wall being plainly discernible; and from the summit there is a
fine view of Wells and of the valley in which the city stands.

The NORTH PORCH is perhaps the finest piece of architecture at Wells,
though it generally receives far less attention than it deserves. It
is certainly the oldest part of the church, and must have been the
first work which Bishop Reginald undertook, about 1185; in style it
retains much of the Norman influence. The mouldings of the noble
entrance arch are numerous and bold, and twice the Norman zig-zag
occurs, though enriched with leaves in a manner that suggests the
coming Gothic. A weather moulding, exquisitely carved with deeply
undercut foliage, covers the arch. Its capitals on the east side
contain figures among their leaves representing the martyrdom of St.
Edmund the King: the first three of the caps have the saint in the
midst, crowned, and transfixed with a number of conventionally-arranged
arrows, and his enemies, two on either side, drawing their bows; the
fourth cap shows an executioner cutting off the saint's head; in the
fifth the head is found by the wolf; the sixth has been partly cut
away, but the body of the wolf and the heads of two figures remain.

In the spandrels above are two square panels containing a cockatrice,
and another strange beast. The gable is filled with an arcade, the
central member of which is corbelled off to make room underneath for
three little lancet windows which light the parvise chamber within.
The buttresses of the porch have slender shafts at the angles, which
are finished off with foliage of a remarkably free and graceful kind;
it should be noticed as an example of those subtle touches that are so
abundant in this porch. On the buttresses are pinnacles with an
arcade, at the top of which little openings cast a shadow that gives a
lightness to the whole effect. A smaller pinnacle is at the apex of
the gable, and underneath it an ornament of twisted foliage.

Nothing could well surpass the interior of this porch; the delicacy,
and refinement which are shown in every detail are the more amazing
when we consider that the architect and his masons had only just
emerged from the large methods of Norman building. A range of three
arcades on either side is divided in the midst by three shafts