[17] Godwin, 304. "It is supposed he was a great benefactor and contributor toward the building of the North-west tower at the West ende of the Church, which his armes fixed upon divers places of the same doo partly shew." [18] "He built our Library over the Cloysters," says Godwin, in his account of Bubwith, p. 304. But I do not see how this is to be reconciled with what he says in the next page; "He [Beckington] built (as to me at least wise seemeth) the East side of the cloyster." [19] There are others of the kind, the west front of Exeter for instance, where I suppose that most people would allow that the shape is positively unsightly. The earliest English instance I know of was the Romanesque west front of Malmesbury Abbey. It is now in ruins, owing to the fall of the western tower which was afterwards added. But it is easy to make out that the oldest front had a blank wall between turrets, instead of either towers or the natural endings of the aisles without towers. [20] This arrangement gives the church of Wells and Rouen a sort of western transept. There is also a western transept at Lincoln and at Peterborough, but it is formed in a different way by a projection beyond the towers. There is something analogous to Wells and Rouen in the west front at Ripon. The towers are now at the ends of the aisles, but, as they were at first without aisles, they must have been built as a projecting transept. [21] This custom of a sham gable or other finish between the towers, having no reference to the gable of the nave, is common both in French and German churches. It is carried to its furthest extreme in the churches of Brunswick, where any one coming from the due west would take each church to be nearly double the height that it really is. [22] I am here speaking of polygonal apses only. In our large Romanesque churches the round apse was commonly used, but their choirs have commonly been altered or destroyed, so that the only round apses that we now have on a very large scale are those of Norwich and Peterborough. In Normandy many more have been preserved, and they are also much more common in smaller churches. Canterbury Cathedral has an apse to the choir of intermediate date, besides the round chapel at the extreme east end, answering in some measure to our polygonal Lady chapel. [23] The Wimborne arrangement of a central and western tower was once much more common than it is now, but in many cases one of the towers has either never been carried up or has been afterwards destroyed, as at Hereford, Shrewsbury, Malmesbury, Bangor, and Christ Church in Hampshire. The arrangement still remains on a vast scale at Ely, and on a smaller at Purton in Wiltshire and in the two lesser churches at Coutances. [24] Anglia Sacra, p. 569. "Episcopale palatium apud Welliam forti muro lapideo circumcinxit, et aquam undique circumduxit;" and again, "Palatium episcopale Wellense muro lapideo batellato et cornellato cum fossatis claudere fecit."