Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet by Charles Kingsley

In a poor suburb of the city, which I could see well enough from my little window, a new Gothic church was building. When I first took up my abode in the cell, it was just begun -- the walls had hardly risen above the neighbouring sheds and garden-fences. But month after month I had watched it growing; I had seen one window after another filled with tracery, one buttress after another finished off with its carved pinnacle; then I had watched the skeleton of the roof gradually clothed in tiling; and then the glazing of the windows -- some of them painted, I could see, from the iron network which was placed outside them the same day. Then the doors were put up -- were they going to finish that handsome tower? No: it was left with its wooden cap, I suppose for further funds. But the nave, and the deep chancel behind it, were all finished, and surmounted by a cross, -- and beautifully enough the little sanctuary looked, in the virgin-purity of its spotless freestone.

For eighteen months I watched it grow before my eyes -- and I was still in my cell!