In the PERPENDICULAR period the great work was the central tower, which replaced a thirteenth-century tower, _c._ 1470. It is 218 feet high; in spite of its vast weight, the Norman piers which support it show no signs of strain. There are massive squinches at the angles, showing that it was intended to be finished by a spire, as the western towers actually were finished. What an astounding spectacle Durham would have presented, capped with three spires! Imagine Lichfield cathedral set on a hill 200 feet high! The Neville screen, built, like that at St. Albans, of clunch, is rather thin and spiky. It is continued to right and left, forming sedilia on _both_ sides of the sanctuary (1372-1380). In the nave is a series of Neville monuments. In the third bay from the west is the Women’s Boundary Cross. The great window of the south transept was inserted about 1400. Between 1660 and 1672 Bishop Cousin did much to repair the damage done by the Scottish prisoners who had been confined in the cathedral after the battle of Dunbar in 1650. His stalls and font cover are of exceptional interest, as specimens of what is rare—seventeenth-century Gothic. It should be compared with the woodwork of St. John’s Church, Leeds. The bishop’s fine oak choir-screen has been destroyed, by way of restoration; the new open screen, and the loss of the organ, give the “unbroken vista” for which so many of our interiors have been ruined. _Exterior._—On the north doorway of the nave is the famous sanctuary knocker. Durham and Beverley, owing to the high reputation of the relics of St. Cuthbert and St. John of Beverley, both had large privileges of sanctuary. Beverley retains the Sanctuary chair, the Frithstool; Durham the knocker. It is thirteenth-century work. “Upon knocking at the ring affixed to the north door of Durham the culprit was admitted without delay; and after full confession, reduced to writing before witnesses, a bell in the Galilee tower ringing all the time to give notice to the town that some one had taken refuge in the church, there was put on him a black gown with a yellow cross on its right shoulder, as the badge of St. Cuthbert, whose peace he had claimed. When thirty-seven days had elapsed, if a pardon could not be obtained, the malefactor, after certain ceremonies before the shrine, solemnly abjured his native land for ever; and was straightway, by the agency of the intervening parish constables, conveyed to the coast, bearing in his hand a white wooden cross, and was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship which sailed after his arrival.” During their stay in the church the culprits lived on the lower floors of the western towers. The atrocious setting of the doorway is modern; as also the pinnacles of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, where the famous Dun Cow is to be seen in a niche in the north-west turret. All the design of this side of the cathedral has been utterly ruined; having been pared away to the depth of three or four inches.