The central spire has the same number of compartments, with windows in all of them except the top; but there are only four windows in each compartment, facing north, east, west, and south. The top of the central spire is about 252 feet from the floor, and of the western spire about 193. But if Lichfield's three spires are unique, so also is Lichfield's =West Front=. It is not, of course, very large, and it is not indeed as large as it might have been had the same means been employed here as were employed at Wells, where an exaggerated idea of size is attained by placing the towers outside the lines of the nave aisles. Here the two towers, which form so important a part of the front, are in their lowest stage merely part of the aisles, so that the whole width of the west front is very little greater than the width of the nave itself. The west front of Lichfield is noted for the richness of its decorations, covered as it is with niches holding images and, it might almost be said, with every available inch covered with decorative work. The whole has a most superb effect, and at a distance, where the poverty of the modern workmanship is not easily discerned, its appearance cannot be very different now to that which it presented at the end of the fourteenth century. Once again the niches are filled with statuary; but this work is nearly all new, and it is by some considered doubtful if any of the original remained in this century. It is, however, generally supposed, and not without good reason, that the five old statues which form part of the highest row in the north-west tower may have been original, and have escaped the general destruction which followed the Puritan capture of the cathedral. Three of the old statues are represented in the picture of the west front in Britton's "Cathedral Antiquities"; and in the interesting picture in Fuller's "Church History," published in 1655, the west front is shewn with every niche filled; but there can be no doubt that this picture must have been made before the siege, or else it must have been drawn with the aid of memory from what remained afterwards.