Old St Paul's Cathedral in length including the portico, and across the transepts, and Winchester Cathedral, the longest remaining medieval church, is long and across the transepts. The cathedral had one of Europe's tallest church spires, the height of which is traditionally given as , surpassing all but Lincoln Cathedral. The King's Surveyor, Christopher Wren (1632–1723), judged that an overestimate and gave . William Benham noted that the cathedral probably "resembled in general outline that of Salisbury, but it was a hundred feet longer, and the spire was sixty or eighty feet higher. The tower was open internally as far as the base of
History of the world's tallest buildings a "building" as "(A) structure that is designed for residential, business or manufacturing purposes" and "has floors". Tall churches and cathedrals occupy a middle ground: their lower areas are regularly occupied, but much of their height is in bell towers and spires which are not. Whether a church or cathedral is a "building" or merely a "structure" for the purposes of determining the title of "world's tallest building" is a subjective matter of definition (this article treats churches and cathedrals as buildings). The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat based in Chicago uses three different criteria for determining the