single stone, which fills its head, has not been planned to fit the mullion with which it is connected. A square recess is to be found in the western wall of the tower. This may have been an aumbrey or cupboard, intended to receive the requisites for the administration of baptism. Two other recesses -the one in the northern, the other in the southern wall-extend within the thickness of the wall for some distance eastward beyond their openings. These recesses have been grooved, as if to receive a shelf, but no satisfactory explanation has ever been brought forward, either of their peculiar formation or of the purpose which they were intended to serve. In the present clock room, where some massive corbels support the belfry floor, a curious funnel-shaped opening, of square section, pierces the eastern wall. This, now blocked up, would, if open, command a view of the chancel, and may have been intended to enable an occupant of the chamber to observe the celebration of the Mass, so that he might sound one of the bells at the fitting moment. On the southern side of the tower, between the tower arch and the recess, some faint. vestiges were found, on the removal of the whitewash, of a flowing foliage pattern executed with some red material, and may yet be indistinctly traced. At some recent period a sloping mass of stone has been raised against the whole width of the south side of the tower, apparently as a buttress. A portion of the spire was blown down in the year 1802, and rebuilt. Its eyelet holes, and the initials of the churchwardens at the time, graven in a lofty position, may be referred to the same date. On the northern side of the tower is a gurgoyle, one of the grotesque imaginings in which the old masons occasionally indulged with a free hand. The north aisle, in the eastern and Decorated portion of its interior, contains in its eastern wall a piscina, or water drain, into which the ablutions of the vessels employed in the Mass were poured. This possesses two peculiarities; the one that its basins are not pierced nor connected with any drainage, the other that it presents the unusual feature of having two basins instead of one. It possibly had a shelf at the back, which has disappeared. Two holes in the wall above it-the one plugged with the remains of a piece of oak, the other with a stone-suggest the existence at one time of a bracket, possibly supporting the image of a saint. A few faint lines, scarcely visible, still remain upon a thin coat of plaster on the wall above the piscina, and indicate thè former existence of a fresco painting. They suggest the folds of a trailing robe, but nothing further is decipherable. Immediately below the eastern window cill, two other holes appear to have received the supports of an altar slab or shelf. On the removal of the whitewash, two loose stones were found to conceal a cavity hewn out of the thickness of the eastern wall on its northern side. This cavity, which was filled with loose fragments of clay, may have had a wooden aumbrey inserted in it. A recess in the northern wall contains the effigy of a knight, but the connection between the two is evidently accidental; the effigy is of far earlier date than the arch, which has been cut into in order to admit the figure. This recess, which has some peculiar mouldings, may have been intended either to cover a founder's tomb, or to serve as an Easter sepulchre, in which the Host was deposited from Good Friday until Easter Morning. It is questionable whether the small doorway in the north aisle occupied its present place when the Decorated aisle was built. It certainly was a doorway in some part of the Decorated church, possibly the " priest's" door in its chancel; but the severance of the Decorated plinth without any return of its mouldings, suggests that the insertion of this doorway in the northern wall was an afterthought of later builders. Viewed from the interior, it seems to form an integral portion of the walling, which strengthens the surmise that the Perpendicular builders raised their new walls upon the old plinth; but having cut through it to form an entrance, proceeded to build in the jambs and arch of a doorway taken from some other site. The intended purpose of several tunnel-like openings, some inches square, carried through the thickness of the north wall, closed at the exterior but still open within, is not obvious. The remains. of some interior cornice shew that the north wall has undergone several alterations, the nature of which it is difficult to define. THE PERPENDICULAR CHURCH. While the existing portions of the Decorated building seem to have had incorporated into them fragments of work possibly of Norman origin, the sixteenth century Perpendicular nave, aisle, and chancel shew evidence of having been very largely constructed out of the materials of an immediately preceding church. It is perhaps easier to form a notion of the general aspect of the Decorated church, although it has all but disappeared, than to solve some puzzles which present themselves in the later building. Anthony Molyneux, a Rector, is of opinion, in his will, dated the 13th of October, 1553, that his "successors cannot in conseyence requyer any dylapidac'one ffor Sefton," owing to the fact that he had "made so greatt coste of ye "chauncell and revestre." The " dilapidac'one' |