The Lady Chapel has three bays; the tracery seen on the outside is new, though it is old inside, for Scott cut the mullions down the middle so as to retain the statuettes that they bore on the inside. There is a low vestry built against the south-eastern bay of the Lady Chapel; the window above this is triangular; the windows of the vestry itself are shown in the illustration, p. [28], as also is the five-light window in the east wall of the Lady Chapel. The north side of the Lady Chapel resembles the southern.
The North Transept. The character of the north presbytery aisle and the north arm of the transept may be seen by examination of the illustration, p. [30]. It will be observed that the north front of this contains a large circular window measuring twenty-nine feet across the glass, filled by a number of circular apertures. This is Lord Grimthorpe's design, upon which much not undeserved ridicule has been showered. He informs us that this arm of the transept was in a somewhat better condition than the southern one, but that all the upper part and the turrets needed rebuilding. In the rebuilt walls of the transept he used the original material as far as it would go, supplementing it by some modern bricks made in imitation of the Roman ones.
The illustration, p. [30], shows the iron railings which, unless a door in them be unlocked, prevent further progress westward, and necessitate a retracing of our steps right round the church till we again reach the north arm of the transept. In the north front of this may be seen a Norman door near the north-west corner, through which pilgrims passed who wished to visit the shrine of the martyr; they entered the precincts by the Waxhouse gate, buying their candles there, and went down the path which is now called "the Cloisters," from which the photograph on p. [30] was taken. In the west wall there is an upper row of three round-headed brick windows once recessed, and a lower one of two twice recessed.
The North Side. The north clerestory of the nave has eight round-headed brick windows at the eastern part, followed by lancets similar to those on the south side. Flat buttresses of brick are built against the clerestory wall between the round-headed windows. The aisle windows, most of them rebuilt, are in Decorated style. A length of eighty feet of the wall towards the western end of the aisle, which had been built about 1553, when the Chapel of St. Andrew had been destroyed, was rebuilt and buttresses built against it to counteract the thrust of the clerestory, which leans outward. In this wall, as on the opposite side of the church, Lord Grimthorpe inserted windows; and placed a new sloping roof over the north aisle, covering the triforium arches which had been glazed as windows in the fifteenth century; this roof is covered with dark-coloured tiles. We may notice in the north aisle wall a brick door in the fourth bay from the east; this was cut by Lord Grimthorpe and leads into the vestry; also a walled-up door in the sixth bay, which led from the church into the graveyard, and another in the sixth bay, which formerly led from the north aisle into the chancel of St. Andrew's Church; this Lord Grimthorpe converted into a cupboard in the thickness of the wall. The only other thing noteworthy at this part of the exterior is a small piece of the north aisle wall of St. Andrew's Church near the footpath.
The Tower. There yet remains the magnificent tower. It is 144 feet high and is not quite square in plan, measuring 47 feet from east to west, and two feet less from north to south. The walls are about seven feet thick; in the thickness, however, passages are cut. It has three stages above the ridges of the roof. The lower stage has plain windows in each face, lighting the church below; the next stage, or ringing room, has two pairs of double windows; and the upper or belfry stage, two double windows of large size, furnished with louvre boards. The parapet is battlemented, and of course of later work than the tower itself. The tower is flanked by pilaster buttresses, which merge into cylindrical turrets in the upper story. For simple dignity the tower stands unrivalled in this country. It must have been splendidly built to have stood as it has done so many centuries without accident. Winchester tower fell not long after its building, Peterborough tower has been rebuilt in modern days; but Paul of Caen did not scamp his work as the monks of Peterborough did, and no evil-living king was buried below the tower, as was the case at Winchester, thus, according to the beliefs of the time, leading to its downfall. Tewkesbury tower alone can vie with that of St. Albans, and the seventeenth-century pinnacles on that tower spoil the general effect, so that the foremost place among central Norman towers as we see them to-day may safely be claimed for that at St. Albans. Few more beautiful architectural objects can be seen than this tower of Roman brick, especially when the warmth of its colour is accentuated by the ruddy flush thrown over it by the rays of a setting sun.
The view from the tower when the air is clear is magnificent, but unfortunately the privilege of ascending the tower once accorded to visitors has, on account of unseemly behaviour, been necessarily withdrawn, and only by a special relaxation of this rule, through the kindness of the Dean, was the writer enabled to inspect the upper parts of the church.
