Ely Cathedral The relief scenes were built into the wall, so each face or statue was individually hacked off, but leaving many finely carved details, and numerous puzzles as to what the original scenes showed. After the reformation it was redeployed as the Parish Church (Holy Trinity) for the town, a situation which continued up to 1938. The central octagonal tower, with its vast internal open space and its pinnacles and lantern above, forms the most distinctive and celebrated feature of the cathedral. However, what Pevsner describes as Ely's 'greatest individual achievement of architectural genius' came about through a disaster at the
Butter-churn tower was 54 metres high at the intermediate platform, but was destroyed in 1797. The third-highest surviving bergfried in Germany is at the Osterburg near Weida in Thuringia; it is 53 metres high and also designed as a butter-churn tower. It is also one of the oldest surviving bergfrieds, dating to 1193. It measures 24 metres to the platform and has an octagonal, stone conical roof dating to the 15th century. Butter-churn tower A butter-churn tower () is a two-part defensive tower in which the upper section has a smaller diameter than the lower section. This design provides a ledge or