High inspiration in the Fens She was to become Lady Smith, giving her name to the town in Natal which was relieved in 1900, 28 years after her death. Her husband, Sir Harry Smith, had been born in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, and he is also responsible for the odd name of Aliwal Road, in Whittlesey, marking his victory against the Sikhs in 1846. It was worth coming just for that, though only rare trains stop at Whittlesea (as it is spelt, as if the railway people wanted to deter anyone from finding the right station for Whittlesey). But, having come all that way, I thought I'd look inside the church, though it was locked. A boy playing in the churchyard told me where the rectory was, and I gave him a pound, which is only what a shilling was when I was a boy, and at the rectory they lent me the key. Even inside, the underside of the steeple was the part that most impressed me. It's Perpendicular in style, from the 15th century, later than the rest of the church. The tower arch inside the church is as tall as the nave and the space under the tower is vaulted with stone, with a wide circle left vacant in the centre for he bell ropes. That is the clincher, really. The tower is made for the bells, which are still there. Bells aren't really to mark the times of services or to frighten away devils (a story made up later) or even to dissipate thunderbolts. The bells are there for the same thing as the spire: the glory of God. I went to Whittlesey only because its picture appears in the tremendous new volume for Cambridgeshire in the Pevsner series of architectural guides. Pevsner (named after its onlie begetter, Nikolaus Pevsner, who first published Cambridgeshire in 1954, 60 years ago) is a British monument. Like the Dictionary of National Biography or the Oxford English Dictionary, the fact of its existence is astonishing. Dr Bradley edited the Pevsner volumes on the cities of London and Westminster, and, having polished off Cambridge, with the help of an office at St John's College (named after the Evangelist), he is going to Oxford's St John's College (named after the Baptist) to revise the volume for that city. About St Mary, Whittlesey, he agrees with Nikolaus Pevsner or at least begins his article on it in almost the same words: "One of the most splendid steeples of Cambridgeshire." We should not take the spires of England for granted. In Spain, for example, they have spires (as at Burgos cathedral) but the great Gothic masterpiece of Seville has its tower, as do Segovia or Toledo. Towers are their thing, really. But think of Louth in Lincolnshire, or Patrington in the East Riding, or the market town of Grantham, where the spire of St Wulfram is 282ft. I wrote here last year about it being in danger from storms, and I'm glad to report it should be mended and the bells ringing by Christmas. These are not isolated wonders but part of the communities nestled round them for centuries. If spires point, it is only to heaven.