internally their splays have rounded heads, evidencing that they are of the period c.1075 - c.1200, when the round arched style of the Normans was going through transition to the gothic style of the pointed arch. The top stage which consists of ashlar or smooth stone, was constructed in the late C14, its design making little concession to the incoming Perpendicular style which had begun mid-century. It has belfry windows on its four sides, and these are still in the Decorated style 'of a generation earlier, each window being of two ogee lights with cinquefoil cusping and a quatrefoil over. The belfry windows are linked by a stringcourse which is interrupted by shallow, clasping buttresses, the top stage being set off from the two unbuttressed lower stages. The tower is crowned by a battlemented parapet which is separated from the top stage by another stringcourse which has gargoyles at the corners and carved heads along its length. The battlements on the south side are attractively crow-stepped, and contain a shallow rectangular niche which is trefoil cusped and which bears a quartered coat of arms. The arms are weathered, and difficult to see from ground level, but they must originally have shown the arms of the Woodford and Folville families. The de Sproxtons had been succeeded by the Brabazons as lords of the manor. The last Brabazon, Sir John, left an only daughter, Janet, who married William de Wadeford of Brentingby, sergeant-at-Iaw. Thus the manor of Sproxton came into the possession of the Woodfords. In 1363 William de Wadeford's son, John, married Mabille Folville, daughter and heir of Geoffrey, lord of Ashby Folville. The quartering of arms is the heraldic convention denoting marriage to an heiress, and the arms carved upon the battlements at Sproxton would have displayed the Woodford arms of three leopards' heads on fleur- de-lis quartered with the Folville cross 'moline' (a cross the ends of whose arms are bifurcated, or split) in commemoration of the marriage of John Woodford and Mabille Folville. The date of 1363 also ties in neatly with Professor Pevsner's dating of the tower's top stage. The tower has pinnacles at the corners, but these are Woodyer's. John Nichols tells us that in 1794 the church has '...a naked tower-steeple, formerly adorned with large pinnacles, of which but a single one remained in 1729, but all are now down'. Nichols' calling the steeple 'naked' is his quaint way of letting us know that a spire does not top the tower. There is an internal spiral stairway in the northwest angle of the tower, indicated externally by a small window on the west side.