About the same time the timbers in the tower were burnt to such an extent that they could no longer support the weight above. ‘The falling of the bells from the tower provided one of the most exciting incidents. They came down into the already ruined mass with a great crash, and sent up a tremendous shower of sparks, which flew to a great height into the air, and, spreading out, fell like a great firework display over the river.’ When the fire was vanquished, it had practically completed its work of destruction. Besides reducing to charred logs and ashes all the timber in the great building, the heat had been so intense that glass windows had been destroyed, tracery demolished, carved finials and capitals reduced to powder, and even the massive piers by the north transept, where the furnace of flame reached its maximum intensity, became so calcined and cracked that they were left in a highly dangerous condition. Only a day or two before this disaster I spent some hours in the abbey church, wandering through the dark Norman aisles and the less sombre chancel, noting many beautiful features which I little realized would cease to exist in a very few days. When I next visited Selby, it was to find the churchyard converted into a mason’s workshop, and the interior of the building filled with a complicated mass of timber framework, supporting the cracked and calcined masonry. Fortunately the splendid Norman nave was not badly damaged, and after a new roof had been built, it was easily made ready for holding services. The two bays nearest to the transept are early Norman, and on the south side the massive circular column is covered with a plain grooved diaper-work, almost exactly the same as may be seen at Durham Cathedral. All the rest of the nave is Transitional Norman except the Early English clerestory, and is a wonderful study in the progress from early Norman to Early English. On the floor on the south side of the nave by one of the piers is a slab to the memory of a maker of grave-stones, worded in this quaint fashion: ‘Here Lyes yᵉ Body of poor Frank Raw Parish Clark and Gravestone Cutter: And yˢ is writt to let yʷ know: W^ʰᵗ Frank for Othʳˢ us’d to do, Is now for Frank done by Another. Buried March yᵉ 31, 1706.’ A stone on the floor of the retro-choir to John Johnson, master and mariner, dated 1737, is crowded with nautical metaphor. ‘Tho’ Boreas with his Blustring blasts Has tos’t me to and fro, Yet by the handy work of God I’m here Inclos’d below And in this Silent Bay I lie With many of our Fleet Untill the Day that I Set Sail My Admiral Christ to meet.’