Twentieth-century builders would drive piles down into the clay to make a firm foundation; the fourteenth-century builders solved the problem by constructing four huge rafts of trimmed oak trunks, each consisting of two rows of trunks crossing at right angles. On these rafts they raised the piers for their tower; and when, in 1906, it became necessary to take out the tree-trunks and replace them with steel girders and cement, many of the trunks were found to be as sound as on the day that they were placed in position six hundred years ago. * * * * * [Illustration: _Photo by_] [_J. Ball_ Part of the Foundations of the Tower of Holy Trinity Church, Hull. ] The greatest charm of our ancient churches lies in the fact that, except in a very few instances, a church is not built in the same style throughout. It is quite evident, if we have a seeing eye, that additions and alterations have been made at different times. The nave and the chancel were plainly not designed by the same architect; the north side of the church differs from the south; here has been added a new door, there a new window; the roof has been taken off, the worn ends of the rafters sawn away, and the rafters used again, so that the roof has to be of less slope than it was before. [Illustration: FILEY CHURCH, SHOWING THE LINES OF THE ORIGINAL ROOF.] All these are the signs of life and growth. If we wish, we can read by them how our forefathers prospered in their worldly business, and how they gave thanks to God for their prosperity; or how the coming of the Plague brought them poverty and distress, and perhaps put a stop to their building operations, which were not completed till many years afterwards, and then in a style quite different from that in which they had been begun. Often these alterations and rebuildings were put on record, and some of the records remain to our day. Thus John Skinner, of Westgate, Hedon, by his will made in 1428, left the sum of forty shillings towards the building of the new tower of St. Augustine’s Church. On the south face of the tower of Aughton Church is an inscription which is now illegible, but which once told in the Anglo-French language that Christopher Aske, the second son of Sir Robert Aske, rebuilt the tower in 1536. [Illustration: _Photo by_] [_C.W. Mason_ The ‘Beverley Imp’—St. Mary’s Church, Beverley. ] Cut into the stone of the same tower is in two places the likeness of an _aske_ or newt, a punning allusion to the name of the builder. In the same way, the tower of Hemingbrough Church is ornamented with a row of ‘dolly-tubs’ or ‘weshing-tuns’—an allusion to the name of Prior Wessington, in whose period of rule the tower was rebuilt.