Attached to this south-east tower pier is the stone pulpit, one of the two special glories of the church, the other being the brass eagle.  The pulpit is either contemporary with the pier or nearly so.  There is apparently some difference in the texture and colour of the stone, but as it is probable that a finer-grained stone would be chosen for work of this character, this need not imply a difference of date.  It was, however, probably added at the same time as the nave clearstory.  The authors of “English Church Furniture” assign it to 1470.[7] Before 1833 (when restored by Rickman) it had been hidden from sight by wood-work and a clerk’s desk at a lower level.  The lower part is boldly corbelled out and the junction of the octagon with the pier shafts is well managed, but the upper open-panelled part is rather too definitely cut off from the lower by the battlemented cornice.  Very few examples of this class of pulpit exist in England, and none equal in importance.

The eagle lectern is a magnificent example of brass casting.  It is generally attributed to the late fifteenth century.  This eagle narrowly escaped being sold by the Puritans for old brass, as happened to that of St. Michael’s.  It closely resembles one belonging to St. Nicholas’ Chapel, Lynn, save that the latter is not equal in refinement of detail and proportion, and the bird is less vigorous in pose and modelling.  In 1560 there was “paid for skowring ye Egle and candell styckes, 10_d_.,” and “for mending of ye Egle’s tayle, 16_d_.”

[Illustration:  PULPIT.]

At least nine chapels and fifteen altars are known to have existed in the church.  The present choir vestry on the north side was the Lady Chapel.  A simple piscina on the south side, about a foot above the present floor, shows that the old floor level was much lower.

The north aisle is lofty and has a clearstory of three windows over the arcade.  In the outer aisle was located Marler’s, or the Mercers’, Chapel, founded in 1537, and beneath it is a crypt or charnel house, now closed save for small ventilating openings.

[Illustration:  ARCHWAY BETWEEN THE NORTH PORCH AND ST. THOMAS’S CHAPEL.]

The black oak roof of low pitch has the panels of the western bay only richly carved with vine leaves and grapes.  Its date is, perhaps, as late as the foundation of the chantry.  The piscina is in the north wall.

West of the north transept is St. Thomas’s Chapel.  Dugdale says that Allesley’s chantry was founded in the time of Edward I, at the altar of St. Thomas the Martyr, “in a chapel near adjoining to the church porch.”  The chapel is certainly older, for the beautiful double doorway from the porch is not later than mid-thirteenth century.  The outer doorway of the porch was rebuilt in the fifteenth century.  The inner one, with a finely moulded arch with angle shafts and the vault with simple diagonal ribs carried on shafts, is of the early thirteenth century.  It is to be regretted that this fine porch is not better seen.  Signs of the puzzling reconstructions that have occurred in this part are visible in the aisle wall.  Two lancet windows high up are of the same date as the porch, and are blocked by the chamber since constructed above St. Thomas’s Chapel, and parts of other window jambs are seen at different levels.