There also is an engraving of the great west door as it was in the early part of the century, and before the Roman cement era of which mention has just been made. This doorway, one of the most beautiful in the country, has much in common with the "Prior's doorway" on the south side of Lincoln Cathedral. As Britton says: "Both are peculiarly rich and fanciful and calculated to excite the warmest admiration," but in his time the sculptured foliage and the figures running round the architrave mouldings and between the columns were so much battered and injured that it was almost impossible to tell the characters of some of them. This doorway is a recessed porch, the outer arch, in line with the main walls, being cusped and foliated with elaborate carving; the inner portion is divided into two arches; the whole being most elaborately decorated with carvings. The central clustered supports has a figure of the Virgin and Child, and on either side of the doorway, standing on clustered pillars beneath canopies, are figures of St. Mary Magdalene (on the north) with the box of ointment, and on the south, Mary the wife of Cleophas; farther forward on each side are vacant pedestals, and in the front are St. John the Evangelist (on the north) and St. Paul (on the south). Whether these were the characters originally represented is open to doubt; Stukeley suggested that what was left in his time represented the Virgin in the centre, and the four Evangelists with Moses and Aaron. [Illustration: GREAT WEST DOORWAY IN 1813.] The =bas-relief figures= in the architrave already mentioned have been restored to represent the two genealogies of Christ as given by St. Matthew and St. Luke, on the north and south sides respectively, as follows:-- North side: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Boaz, Jesse, David, Virgin and Child. South side: Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Judah, and St. Joseph; the Virgin and St. Joseph being the two figures at the top of the arch. There is a very beautiful fourteenth-century bas-relief above the central pillar of the doorway, representing Our Lord in Glory, with an angel on each side, having a serpent under his feet. The doors are covered with fine iron work, which, with the exception of that on the lowest panel, is supposed to be original. [Illustration: THE GREAT WEST DOORWAY.] The two side doorways in the west front are deeply recessed in three orders with very finely-carved mouldings. These also have bas-relief figures in the architraves. Those in the northern doorway represent the principal princes and princesses who promoted Christianity in England, while those in the southern doorway represent the leading early missionaries to England. In the northern doorway, on the north side, are Ethelbert, Edwin, Oswald, Oswy, Peada, Wulphere; and on the south side, Bertha, Ethelburga, Hilda, Eanfled, Ermenilda, Werburga.