to conjecture; but it is plain to see that in all those centuries the congregations and visitors to the Abbey had been in danger, at any moment, of being crushed to death by a possible sudden collapse of the tower. This injury was repaired, and new foundations were laid, down to the solid chalk, and the upper parts of the tower were secured. Funds at that time permitted of little else being done. In 1871, an appeal for £50,000 was issued, resulting in a subscription of about £21,000; and in 1875, a further appeal for £30,000. Then the clerestory began to fall. A new faculty was granted, and more subscriptions came in, but by 1879 all these funds were again exhausted, and the restoration committee resigned. Then came the great opportunity which Lord Grimthorpe had long desired, of getting the restoration entirely into his own hands. He was an incredibly wealthy man,[2] with a passion for exercising the part of amateur architect, and an equal passion for controversy. He procured a new faculty, granting him unlimited power at his own expense, to “restore, repair, and refit the Church.” Thus, disastrously for antiquity, was the old building made over to him, without let or hindrance, to do as he would. [Sidenote: _LORD GRIMTHORPE_] The handiwork of Lord Grimthorpe is writ large, all over the building. He did the most extraordinary things. In restoring the transepts he put in what purported to be “Early English lancets,” with false heads that look like genuine heads from without, but from within are seen to be cut off square; and was so enamoured of the red Roman tiles that give so noble an appearance to the exterior that, in rebuilding the walls, he supplied the lack of genuine ones for the new work by especially manufacturing “Roman” tiles of his own, to form the walls of the south transept; designed in what has been very fitly styled “Railway-station Gothic.” [Illustration: LORD GRIMTHORPE.]