In the Perpendicular work of the western towers everything is in
graceful proportion, and nothing from the ground to the top of the
turrets, jars with the wonderful dignity of their perfect lines.
A few years before the Norman Conquest a central tower and a presbytery
were added to the existing building by Archbishop Cynesige. The
'Frenchman's' influence was probably sufficiently felt at that time to
give this work the stamp of Norman ideas, and would have shown a marked
advance on the Romanesque style of the Saxon age, in which the other
portions of the buildings were put up. After that time we are in the
dark as to what happened until the year 1188, when a disaster took
place of which there is a record:
'In the year from the incarnation of Our Lord 1188, this church was
burnt, in the month of September, the night after the Feast of St.
Matthew the Apostle, and in the year 1197, the sixth of the ides of
March, there was an inquisition made for the relics of the blessed John
in this place, and these bones were found in the east part of his
sepulchre, and reposited; and dust mixed with mortar was found
likewise, and re-interred.
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