picture calls forth a sudden exclamation of pleasure. A second and more critical glance reveals the chief features of the tower. Its height, 65 feet, is especially noticeable. Like other towers which we have met, it tapers a little, and it is crowned with a battlement. Each of its five stories was evidently devoted to a particular use. Freeman has noted them: a ringers’ chamber below, followed by stories which had windows looking towards the North and East, then a room fitted up as a dovecot, and lastly the belfry itself[291]. The date of the Gumfreston tower is fixed approximately at A.D. 1300. Of the Pembrokeshire series as a whole, Freeman says that they were all built within “castle times,” and that they belong to “all manner of centuries from the first to the last Harry[292].” He further considers that he could discern preparations for habitation in “some of the vaulted apartments.” The simple character of the Pembroke towers formerly led many writers to assign them to a pre-Norman period, but this opinion is now discredited. On the other hand, the evidence shows that they are not, as a class, late Tudor buildings, as extremists in the contrary direction have suggested. A subtle objection is made that the towers may be simply imitations of castellated architecture, and that the resemblance, being incidental and unintentional, has no recondite significance. There is some degree of force in the contention, because there must have been interaction of influence. Thus, not only in semi-secular buildings, like the abbot’s barn of Bradford-on-Avon (Figs. 43, 44, pp. 171, 173 _infra_), but also in castles and fortified mansions, like that of Nunney (Fig. 27), do we meet with architectural features which are usually associated with religious structures. Such details, as a rule, are best seen in doors and windows, and they are in harmony with the Gothic styles of their respective periods. Side by side with these ornamental features, primitive arrangements for defence are retained, even in the Tudor country mansions. In spite of this cross-influence it may be observed that the defensive steeples occur just in those places where defence [Illustration: FIG. 27. Portion of Nunney Castle, Somerset, a fortified manor-house, built A.D. 1373-1400. The corner towers probably served as peles. In the windows (Decorated style) and in other details, there is evidence of the relationship between religious and secular architecture. ]