It will hardly need this journey to be convinced of his preference for the double window-opening, divided by the mid-wall shaft. This declares itself patently in the well-known towers at Lincoln; and all the towers mentioned above still have, or probably have had, such windows. Sometimes, as at Nettleton or Coleby, the belfry stage has been entirely renewed in the later Gothic period. Sometimes, as at Winterton or Alkborough, the tower has simply been heightened, and the Saxon belfry stage has become an intermediate storey. Sometimes, as at Cuxwold, the top of the tower has been lopped off altogether, or, as at Swallow, has been replaced by a modern stage in a rather incongruous style. In every case the original existence of the “mid-wall shaft” window cannot be reasonably doubted. The form of such openings as remain is very much the same. Its main outlines have been seen in the uppermost stage of the tower at Barton: two adjacent openings, with dressed jambs and voussoirs flush with the general surface of the wall, with rounded arches springing from through-stone impost-blocks, and received at their meeting by another such block, which rests on the mid-wall shaft itself. These openings pierce the wall without any splay. They have no strip-framing, and seldom, if ever, any attempt at hood-moulding. Although, as has been hinted, some beauty of form may be claimed for them, they are as simply constructed a type of arched opening as could well be devised. Their proportions are sometimes rather elegant; and, when they are set round a small upper stage, divided by a projecting string-course or off-set from the unbuttressed and sometimes slightly tapering length of the lower stage, their effect is always striking. The architectural value of these towers, so simple in their principles of construction, so insignificant in their height, is less than their historical interest. Saxon builders had little architectural knowledge or skill; and buildings like Stow impress us more by their height and mass of wall than by any very striking architectural feature. The work at Barton-on-Humber is curious and interesting building: it is not architecture. In the Lincolnshire towers, a step is taken in the right direction by the avoidance of merely decorative surface-ornament. The tower asks for judgment on its own merits. Where it is divided by offsets into two or three stages, the result is satisfactory; although, if the belfry stage is of much the same area as the stage below, the tower looks top-heavy. This certainly is the case of St. Mary-le-Wigford. At St. Peter-at-Gowts, a small upper stage is set firmly and squarely upon a long and tapering lower one; and there is no finer tower in the whole series. The third type, where there is no off-set—the much-restored tower of Springthorpe is now, if it was not always, in this state—is merely insignificant.