Editing St Botolph's Church, Boston (section)

==Significance of the tower==
[[File:Boston England Panorama.jpg|thumb|Panorama of Boston taken from the Tower]]
The tower of St Botolph's Church is {{Convert|266|ft|6|in|m}} high,{{efn|name="height"}} making it the tallest parish church in England to its roof.  For the last one hundred and thirty odd years, there have only been 26 bells at the Stump: 15 [[carillon]] bells, 10 bells hung for [[Change ringing|full circle ringing]], and the sanctuary bell (or 27 if one includes the old ship's bell).

The tower was used as a marker for travellers on The Fens and in The Wash. It is commonly believed that it was once lit from inside the tower in order to serve this purpose at night as well as during the day. George Jebb's ''Guide to the Church of St Botolph, with Notes on the History of Boston'' mentions rings in the tower from which lights could be hung, pointing out that it was a popular practice. The accuracy of this reference is not known. [[Pishey Thompson]], in ''The History and Antiquities of Boston'', quotes from Britton, editor of ''The Lincolnshire Churches, in the Division of Holland'':

{{Blockquote |The lantern, no doubt, was intended to be lighted at night for a sea-mark. The church of All Saints at York has a lantern very much resembling this of Boston; 'and tradition tells us that anciently a large lamp hung in it, which was lighted in the night time, as a mark for travellers to aim at, in this city. There is still the hook of the pulley on which the lamp hung in the steeple.' | Drake's York, p.&nbsp;292.}}
{{Blockquote |And Stow tells us that the steeple had five lanterns; to wit, one at each corner, and 'It seemeth that the lanterns on the top of this steeple were meant to have been glazed, and lights in them to have been placed nightly in the winter; whereby travellers to the city might have the better sight thereof, and not miss their way.' | Survey, p.&nbsp;542.}}

The tower became important again in [[World War II]], when Lincolnshire was known as "Bomber County" for its proliferation of air bases. British and American pilots would use The Stump as a signpost to guide them back to base. It also appears that the German [[Luftwaffe]] used the tower as a marker, but the town of Boston suffered few bombings.

When floodlighting was recently fitted at The Stump, a great deal of research was done. The yellow lighting of the octagonal lantern was specially put in place to represent the historic use as a marker to guide travellers on land and sea.

===Architectural influence abroad===
[[File:Harkness Tower from JE.JPG|thumb|150px|right|[[Harkness Tower]] at [[Yale University]]]]
In the 1920s, the truncated tower inspired the form of several structures during a resurgence of [[Gothic Revival]] buildings in the United States. The spire of [[Harkness Tower]] at Yale University in [[New Haven, Connecticut]] (1921) and [[Riverside Church]] (1930) in [[New York City]] were the closest exemplars of the original masonry structure. Skyscrapers such as the Chicago [[Tribune Tower]] (1925) and New York's [[American Radiator Building]] (1926) also took formal cues.<ref name= Larson>{{cite web |last= Larson |first= Todd |title= The tower that stumped Boston |date=2 June 2012 |website=ArchiTalk |publisher= Google Blogger |url= http://architalk-tlarson.blogspot.com/2012/06/tower-that-stumped-boston.html |access-date= 25 September 2015}}</ref>  In Boston, Massachusetts, so named for St Botolph's parish, [[Boston University]] planned its own "Boston stump" in the form of the [[Alexander Graham Bell tower]], but these plans were never realized.<ref name="Larson"/>