Nearing Selby, the octagonal Perpendicular lantern and spire of Brayton church, curiously imposed upon a Norman tower, attracts attention as much by the relief they give from the deadly dulness just encountered as for their own sake; although they are beautiful and interesting, the lantern having been designed to hold a cresset beacon by which the travellers of the Middle Ages were guided at night across the perilous waste; the spire serving the same office by day. Here, too, the isolated hills of Brayton Burf and Hambleton Hough, three miles away, show prominently, less by reason of their height, which is inconsiderable, than on account of the surrounding levels, which give importance to the slightest rise. Brayton, which, apart from its beautiful church, is about as miserable a hole as it is possible to find in all Yorkshire (and that is saying a good deal), is a kind of outpost between Selby and these wilds, standing a mile and a half in advance of the town. In that mile and a half the builders are busy erecting a flagrant suburb, so that the traveller presses on, curious to witness the prosperity of Selby itself, arguable from these signs. Even without them, Selby is approached with expectancy, for its abbey is famous, and abbeys imply picturesque towns. From this point of view Selby is distinctly disappointing. The glorious Abbey, now the parish church, is all, and more than, one expects, and the superlatively cobble-stoned Market-place, painful to walk in, is picturesque to look at; but the rest is an effect of meanness. Mean old houses of no great age; mean new ones; mean and threadbare waterside industries; second-hand clothes-shops, coal-grit, muddy waters and foreshores of the slimy Ouse, shabby rope-walks, and dirty alleys: these are Selby. You forget all this before that beautiful Abbey, whose imposing west front faces the Market-place, and whose great length is revealed only by degrees. Alike in size and beauty, it shows itself in a long crescendo to the admiring amateur of architecture, who proceeds from the combined loveliness of the Norman, Early English, and Perpendicular west front, to the entrance by the grand Transitional Norman-Early English north porch, thence to the solemn majesty of the purely Norman nave, ending with the light and graceful Decorated choir and Lady Chapel. The upper stage of the tower fell in 1690, and destroyed the south transept. A very destructive fire occurred in October 1906, and opportunity was afterwards taken of doing a good deal of general restoration.