One cannot but think with the erection of All Saints’, Moulton, began the church-building rivalry between the two neighbouring monasteries of Croyland and Spalding, which lasted until the dissolution of the greater abbeys. Croyland had built the Norman portion of the present church of Whaplode. Then Spalding Priory, about 1175, began the present Church of Moulton, the nave of which would be considerably larger than the Norman nave of Whaplode, and though Moulton nave is built in the Transitional Period, in a great number of its details it resembles Whaplode; for you have at Whaplode four shafted compound piers, while at Moulton you have the four shafts arranged round a central column forming part of the solid masonry, still all engaged and forming a solid pier of coursed masonry; next you have a further development of the idea—four larger and four smaller shafts placed alternately, but still engaged, almost immediately followed by the disengaged shafts of the Lancet Period, as at St. Mary’s, Weston. The pier bases are similar to those at Whaplode, though they show the slight advance art had made, but at Moulton you will find a circular bench round the base. The Croyland monks, when they saw the church at Moulton was finer than theirs at Whaplode, not to be outdone by the younger monastery, lengthened the nave of Whaplode; and though Spalding long afterwards added a bay to the nave at Moulton, that at Whaplode is still the longest and narrowest nave in the district. The capitals of Transitional work at Moulton are interesting—the stiff engaged leaves are all inclined one way, and follow one another round the necks of the capitals. Mr. Sharpe says— “In the pier capitals of the eastern part of the nave of Whaplode and the nave of Moulton churches we see the early efforts of the artists of the period to produce relief and to disengage the flowers and the leaf from the surface to which it was attached. The strong resemblance of the ornamentation of the capitals in these two churches leaves no doubt that the Transitional portion of the nave at Whaplode and the nave at Moulton are contemporaneous work, the same artists having probably been employed on the carved work of the naves.”