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The ground plan is singularly simple, one long parallelogram nearly 200 feet long and eighty feet wide, with no transepts, its only projections being the north and south porches and the “Hall” chapel used as a vestry.

THE INTERIOR

The second, or Norman, church, ended two bays east of the present tower, as is plain to see from the second pillar from the tower being, as is the case in Peterborough Cathedral, composed of a broad mass of wall with a respond on either side, the western respond being of much later character than the eastern. If the chancel was originally as it is now, it must have been as long as the nave, but the nave then perhaps included two of the chancel bays. At present the lengthening of the nave westward and the adding of the tower has made the nave twice the length of the chancel. At first the church had just a nave and a chancel, but, about 1180, aisles were added to the nave; to do this the nave walls were taken down and the eastern responds made, which we have just spoken of, and the beautiful clustered columns of the arcades, three on each side, set up. The aisles were narrow and probably covered by a lean-to roof. The arches springing from these columns would be round-headed, the pointed arches we see now being the work of a century later, when much wider north and south aisles were built; that on the north being on a particularly grand and massive scale. The westernmost bay on either side was made nearly twice the width of the others so as to correspond with the breadth of the tower, because one of the features of the church is that the two aisles run out westwards and align with the tower, and as the chapels on either side run out in the same way eastwards, as far as the chancel, we get the parallelogram above mentioned. As you enter the west door you are at once struck by the great size of the tower piers, and next you will notice the beauty of the tower arch, with its mouldings five deep. There is no chancel arch, and the church has one long roof from end to end. The aisles are very wide, and the pillars tall and slender, so that you are able to see over the whole body of the church as if it were one big hall. Curiously, the west window of the south aisle is not in the centre of the wall, and looks very awkward. Below it is a bookcase lined with old books. There are two arched recesses for tombs in the south wall, and there is a monument between two of the south arcade pillars, where a black marble top to an altar tomb is inscribed to Francis Malham de Elslacke, 1660. The east end of the north aisle is used as a morning chapel. A tall gilt reredos much blocks the chancel east window. When I last visited the church the north and south doorways being wide open gave the church plenty of wholesome fresh air, so different from the well-known Sabbath “frowst” which, in the days of high pews, and when a church was only opened on Sunday, never departed from the building.