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 Tower" and the bergfried of Idstein Castle) and Oberwesel (the "Oxen Tower"). The Marksburg above Braubach am Rhein had a square bergfried to which was added a small butter-churn turret in 1468. This burned down in 1705 and was replaced in 1905. One of the tallest towers is the 56-metre-high Round Tower, the symbol of the town of Andernach, which dates to 1453 and has an unusual variation: an octagonal upper turret with a stone gable roof. The highest bergfried of a hill castle with a butter-churn top (1370) was that of Rheinfels Castle above Sankt Goar am Rhein which