screen, however, strikes an inharmonious note. Oblong as to ground-plan, though, curiously enough, never quite rectangular, the building, when seen from outside, is cruciform as to clear-story, and from the crossing springs a high fortress-like lantern tower with turrets or bartizans at the angles of the battlements. The east and west windows are restorations, and indeed the many vicissitudes this church has undergone, and its low situation, have frequently exposed it to two evils--restorations and floods. Granted to the corporation after the suppression of the guilds and chantries in 1548, the church was used as a kind of religious lecture-hall in 1608 and for some years later; and in 1648 as quarters for the Scots prisoners taken at Preston. The fabric was described as in a state of sad neglect in 1734, when it was linked to a parish for the first time in its history. [Illustration: THE STAIRCASE, OLD BABLAKE SCHOOL] Close by the church and forming the view of all views to be dwelt on in the city, stand two picturesque black and white timbered houses, one given by John Bond for an almshouse for aged and decayed folk recommended by the Trinity guild, and the other the Bablake school raised by the benevolence of Mr Wheatley in the sixteenth century. Bond's Hospital, which contains some good seventeenth-century furniture, has been restored; but by preternatural good luck Wheatley's School escaped that devastating touch. The hall contains roof timbers possibly older than the bulk of the building, and an ancient staircase; and the room to the left on the ground floor has a fine Jacobean mantelpiece which came from Sir Orlando Bridgman's house in Little Park Street. There is an open gallery both on the ground floor and the upper storey. The sight of these houses, grandly planned and strongly built, with lovely gables where barge-board and finial are marvels of the house-carver's art, is a fitting close to a day in Coventry. Let us hope that no restorer, modern builder, well-meaning or enterprising commercial man will ever rob us of the loveliness of Bond's Hospital and Wheatley's School at Bablake. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 730: This is a condition of things tourists ought to be thankful for; it is unhappily rare. S. Michael's closes at 5 o'clock in summer, 4 o'clock in winter; the other churches at 4 all the year round. The sight-seer ought to have an opera glass.] [Footnote 731: See p. 102.] [Footnote 732: See p. 164.] [Footnote 733: See p. 297.] [Footnote 734: Contrast the outline of Trinity spire--work of the seventeenth century. See Bond, _Eng. Architecture_, p. 633.] [Footnote 735: Woodhouse, _Churches of Coventry_, 44.] [Footnote 736: Woodhouse, 45.] [Footnote 737: Poole, 150.] [Footnote 738: Poole, 142.] [Footnote 739: Poole, 145.] [Footnote 740: Brooks, S. Michael's Church.]