on each side of this wider arch resume the complex[10] form already described at the eastern end of the nave, though they do not accurately agree either in plan or details....  Now it seems highly probable that it was at this very spot that it [i.e., a Norman west front] stood, with two flanking Norman towers at the end of the aisles.  The wider nave-arch, with its massive and complex pillars, was the entrance into the tower from each side of the nave.  The thicker aisle-wall opposite to it was, in fact, the tower wall.  The larger and heavier group of vaulting-shafts against the aisle-wall, and the strong arch spanning the aisle across this point in place of the groin-rib, were all parts of the tower....  The transformation of the base of these two immense towers into a compartment of the aisle, so similar to all the rest that its real nature has never been hitherto suspected, is highly ingenious.  It is only when once detected that the anomalies above mentioned are at all intelligible.”

These arguments prove to demonstration that the intention was to make the Norman church end at the spot where now stand the third pillars of the nave; and that the two western towers had begun to be built.  As an after thought another bay was added to the nave, with western transept, and last of all the grand west front was another after thought.  But they do not establish the fact that the towers were ever finished, or the Norman west front actually erected.  The considerations adduced are perfectly consistent with the theory that the additional length of the nave was decided upon while the towers were still unfinished, and the lower part of the towers transformed as Mr Paley has described.  Thus we combine the rival theories.  For Mr Poole[11] maintains that the point, up to which Benedict’s work was carried, must mean the front we now see.  One argument he advances appears unanswerable.[12] Of the two chroniclers, Swapham takes his history down to 1246; Abbot John ruled from 1249 to 1262.  Both these writers therefore, beyond all question, were alive when the present front was finished.  “Here are two people writing after the present west front was erected, and for persons before whose eyes the present west front appeared every day, and speaking of the tower and of the west front as well-known limits to a certain work.  Surely they not only meant, but must have meant, the front that then was, in other words, the west front as it is now.”

The conclusion of the controversy may perhaps not yet have been reached.  But all the difficulties appear to be explained by understanding that Benedict’s work extended to the west end of the present nave, and that he carried the whole building further west than was originally intended, and managed to do this without destroying the lower part of the towers which had actually been raised.