§ 56. When interest was first revived in ecclesiology, the fashion of raising the quire and chancel above the rest of the church, by a number of steps intended to be symbolical, became very prevalent. This, however, was not in keeping with medieval practice. It is true that occasionally chancels were raised high above the rest of the church. At Walpole St Peter the chancel, rebuilt in the fifteenth century, was brought up to the churchyard boundary, and apparently interfered with a right of way which led round the back of the old chancel. It was therefore built with a floor raised high above the nave, and the right of way was preserved by piercing an arch below. St Leonard's at Exeter has a chancel built over an archway which affords access to a narrow street. A church built on a slope, like Tansor, ascends noticeably from west to east. But the ascent is contrived, not by means of flights of steps, but by an inclined plane. As a rule, floors of churches sloped slightly upwards towards the altar. A perfectly level floor gives the false effect in perspective of a downward slope: a floor, on the other hand, with a gradual upward slope has a level effect. The floor of the quire was sometimes elevated by a single shallow step above the floor of the nave: very generally, it was on the same level: at St Michael's, Cambridge, the level was slightly lower. The chancel, again, was a step higher than the quire, and the altar stood slightly raised upon its own oblong altar pace. The levels at Geddington in Northamptonshire remain much as they were. The quire is on a level with the nave: the chancel is a pace higher, and the altar stands upon its own pace. An inscription round the foot of the chancel wall records the making of the pavement (now renewed) and the _scabella_, by which the foot-paces are almost certainly implied, of the altar in 1369. Round the lower foot-pace of the south chapel is another inscription, apparently of the same date. In no respect have modern restorations been so disastrous as in the altering of original levels, in order to give the altar the elevation which was supposed by the restorers to be necessary.