storey of the Lady Chapel with its row of windows of a domestic type. [Illustration: CHRISTCHURCH PRIORY, FROM THE NORTH-EAST.] [Illustration: TOWER DOOR.] A systematic examination of the exterior may best be begun with the #Western Tower#. This is of fifteenth-century date, and is set partially within the church--that is to say, its builder did not add it to the west of the church, making an archway through the previously existing west front, but pulled down the whole west wall of the nave, leaving, however, the west walls of the aisles, and carried the north and south walls of the new tower as far back into the church as the space occupied by the western bay, thus leaving two spaces at the west end of the aisles, one now used as a vestry, the other as a kind of lumber-room. In the west face of the tower is a doorway under a rectangular label; in the spandrels are two shields, bearing the arms of the Priory, and of the Montacutes and Monthermers, Earls of Salisbury. The doors are modern. Immediately above the doorway is a large window with three tiers, each containing six lights. The head of the window above these is of an ordinary Perpendicular character. The tracery was restored in 1828. Above this window is a niche containing a figure of Christ. The upper stage, which contains the bells, has two two-light windows in each face, each light being divided by a transom. These windows are not glazed, but are furnished with louvre-boards. The tower is crowned with a pierced battlemented parapet having pinnacles at the corners and at the middles of each side; within this rises a low pyramidal roof. The stair turret runs up at the north-east angle of the tower; this is octagonal, and is crowned with a parapet and crocketed pinnacles; the upper part of this turret and the pinnacles were renewed in 1871. The tower is strengthened by two buttresses at right angles to each other at each of the two western angles. On either side of the tower, as already explained, may be seen the west end of the nave aisles; these have windows with Perpendicular tracery, and on the north wall of the north aisle is a plain, round-headed doorway cut through the wall in modern time, with a Perpendicular window over it. [Illustration: NORTH PORCH.]