TOWERS.--These are in general rather low for their breadth. They are more massive than the Saxon ones which preceded them, and this is particularly the case with the later buildings. Many of the church towers which were built soon after the Conquest have very much of the Saxon character remaining, and are proportionally taller than those of later date, but the workmanship is better. A large belfry window, divided by a shaft, in the upper storey, is a common feature; and the surface of the tower is frequently ornamented with stages of intersecting or plain arcades, and sometimes the whole surface is covered with ornament. The angles of the tower are strengthened by flat buttresses having but little projection, which sometimes reach to the top of the building, and sometimes only to the first or second storey. The parapets of most Norman towers are destroyed, and it is consequently difficult to say what they were originally; but it seems probable that the towers terminated in a pointed roof. Staircases were of common occurrence, and are frequently made very ornamental features. St. James's Tower, Bury St. Edmunds, is an example of an early Norman tower, exhibiting the flat, pilaster-like buttresses, so characteristic of Norman work, and secondly, a porch flanked by two pedimented buttresses, ornamented with corbel-tables and intersecting arcades. The arch is plainer than it would have been at a later period, but it shows the billet moulding which is also used on the buttresses. The capitals are of the plain cushion form, and the pediment of the porch exhibits the scalework surface ornament alluded to in p. 216. WINDOWS.--These are universally round-headed, except in the Transition period. The simplest form is a narrow round-headed opening, with a plain dripstone; but they are frequently wider, and divided into two lights by a shaft, and richly ornamented with the zigzag and other mouldings.