Several kinds of material have been employed. Up to almost the end of the thirteenth century the builders used a coarse gritstone such as is found five miles to the south-west at Brimham Rocks, and also a finer gritstone or sandstone that may have come from Hackfall. After that date they built with magnesian limestone, brought partly, perhaps, from near York, but chiefly, it would seem, from Quarry Moor, a mile south of the city. At the last restoration the older parts were repaired with Hackfall stone, and the later parts with limestone from Quarry Moor and Monkton Moor, and so extensive were the repairs needed on the exterior, that the church somewhat belies, by its appearance, its real antiquity. The most picturesque approach is from High St. Agnes-gate by a flight of steps, which ascend through an old arch to an avenue of limes that leads up to the south door; but it is better, perhaps, that the survey should begin at the west end. =The West Front= was doubtless the object of two indulgences, issued respectively by Archbishop de Gray in 1233 and by Pope Alexander IV. in 1258, and was therefore erected just before or during the struggle between Henry III. and Simon de Montfort, in the best period of the Early English style. The height of the gable is said to be 103 feet, and that of the towers 110 feet, and the front is divided by the string-courses into four stages. In the central compartment the lowest stage is approached by three steps, and is filled by three doorways, set in a thickening of the wall, and surmounted by gables finished with crosses. The central entrance, higher, more widely splayed, and more deeply recessed than the others, has five orders and five triple shafts in the jamb, while they have three orders and three shafts, the innermost of which is triple and the others single. As usual in this style, the shafts are detached and not worked on the stones of the jamb. The mouldings of the capitals are carried through the jamb from end to end, and on the front of the piers between the archways is a curious moulding which resembles an undercut roll set up on end, and which has a capital as if it were a shaft. In the arches the mouldings are chiefly rounds and hollows: many of the former are filleted, and some of the latter are filled with the dog-tooth (an ornament peculiar to this style), which is more profusely employed in the central arch than in the others. The terminations of the dripstones are foliated and stand out detached. The central gable is adorned with a square panel of foliage, and either of the others with a sunk foliated quatrefoil, and between the gables are spouts issuing from the heads of animals. It is worthy of remark that all three doors open into the nave; for as a rule when a church has three west doors, two of them open into the aisles.[34] The wooden doors in these and all the doorways of the church are of considerable age, and those in the central archway here bear the date 1673 in nails.