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 boldly detached from the pear-shaped moulding round which they are grouped. These shafts carry the ribs of the groined vault, and divide the porch into two square bays. Their capitals are very boldly undercut, and bear distinct traces of Romanesque influence; indeed, the volutes of the cap on the west side give it almost the appearance of a very freely-carved Corinthian capital. Those at the angles are of like fashion, except that on the north-east, which has fuller and freer foliage, wherein stands a man shooting with his bow at a bird, the whole most vigorously conceived. [Illustration: The North Porch.]