There is, however, an essential difference to be noted in the position of these spires, those of the cathedrals at the centre, the crowning point in the composition, those of the parish churches at the west end, springing sheer from the ground.  While the former have a more intimate relation to the building the latter have an almost independent existence in keeping with the theory which regards them more as symbols of municipal pride and power than as expressions of spiritual aspiration.

But however mixed the motives for their erection, religious forms and symbolism governed the design.  Thus we have here three principal divisions—­tower, octagon, spire, and nine stories or stages in all, six belonging to the tower and octagon, and three to the spire.  Then in its dimensions we find that the total height is 300 feet,[5] the plan (exclusive of buttresses) is 30 feet square, while in its proportions the number 30 is interwoven, so to speak, with a simple arithmetical progression of heights in each story.  Thus it is 30 feet from the ground to the spring of the lowest five-light windows, 30 feet again to the spring of the single-light windows, 27 feet more to the spring of the grouped windows above, and another 30 to the spring of the belfry windows.  Thence it is 15 feet to the cornice below the battlements.  The remainder is divided into a series of 20 feet heights, two twenties from cornice to top of parapet of octagon, 20 in each of the two decorated stages of the spire, 20 to centre of the upper spire-lights, three twenties to the finial.  If we look at the stories as marked by the string-courses below the windows we find 50 feet given to the door and great window and then 20, 30, and 40 feet stages, reaching to the top of the parapet.  The reader will have noticed the interposition of a 27 feet space among the thirties, and the reason for this is worth explaining.

It is now known that the tower could not be built in line with the centre of the proposed new nave because of the existence of a filled-in pit or quarry at its north-west angle.  But the builder was rash enough to build the north-west buttresses beyond the edge of the old excavation and resting on the looser material.  The consequences might have been foreseen.  By the time the building had reached the grouped windows the settlement or sinking was considerable and an effort was made to remedy it, first by reducing the height of this (the weakest story), by one yard and next by starting the courses level once more.  Five hundred years later and we find that whereas the sinking is 7-1/2 inches near the ground level it is only 4 inches at the windows, plainly showing that it had sunk 3-1/2 inches before the remedy was applied and four inches since.  The writer is informed by the architect (Mr. J. Oldrid Scott) that all this angle was so full of rents and cracks that (coupled with the decay of the stone, especially in the buttresses) it was surprising that the whole had not fallen.  A curious disregard of what we look on as a natural sentiment is to be noted in this connection, for the builders used a quantity of fine sepulchral slabs from the churchyard as filling for the foundations.