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Apart from its commanding situation, the whole pile is very magnificent, and, viewed as a whole, outside, it has nothing to touch it, though the west front is not to compare in beauty with that of Peterborough. Inside, York is larger and grander, and Ely surpasses both in effect. But if we take both the situation and the outside view and the inside effect together, Lincoln stands first and Durham second.

GREAT TOM

THE CENTRAL TOWER

I was once at an Archæological society’s meeting in Durham when Dean Lake addressed us from the pulpit, and he began by saying: “We are now met in what by universal consent is considered the finest church in England but one; need I say that that one is Lincoln?” The chuckle of delight which this remark elicited from my neighbour, Precentor Venables, was a thing I shall never forget. We will now take a look at the building, and begin first with the outside, and, starting at the west, walk slowly along the south side of the close. If we begin near the Exchequer Gate we see the west front with its fine combination of the massive work of Remigius, the fine Norman doors of Alexander (with the English kings over the central door), the rich arcading of Grosteste along the top and at the two sides, and the flanking turrets with spirelets surmounted by the statues of St. Hugh and the Stow Swineherd. We look up to the gable over the centre flanked by the two great towers on either side of it. Norman below, Gothic above, with their very long Perpendicular double lights, octagonal angle buttresses and lofty pinnacles. The northern tower once held the big bell “Great Tom,” and the southern (“St. Hugh’s”) has still its peal of eight. Lincoln had a big bell in Elizabeth’s reign, which was re-cast in that of James I., and christened “Great Tom of Lincoln,” 1610. This second great bell being cracked in 1828, was re-cast in 1855, and the Dean and chapter of the time actually took down the beautiful peal of six, called the “Lady Bells,” which had been hung in Bishop Dalderby’s great central tower about 1311 and gave that tower its name of the “Lady Bell Steeple,” and had them melted down to add to the weight of “Great Tom,” thus depriving the minster, by this act of vandalism, of its second ring of bells. The third, or new, “Great Tom,” now hangs alone in the central tower. It weighs five tons eight hundredweight, and is only surpassed in size in England by those at St. Paul’s, at Exeter Cathedral, and Christ Church, Oxford. It is six feet high, six feet ten inches in diameter, and twenty-one and a half feet round the rim, and the hammer, which strikes the hours, weighs two hundredweight.