§ 43.
The naves of the larger churches of canons,
such as Bridlington, Guisbrough and Worksop, were
provided with their full complement of aisles. Christchurch
and St Botolph's at Colchester are conspicuous
instances of Augustinian conventual naves
which were aisled in the twelfth century. But it
is also certain that many canons' churches, like
Haughmond, had no aisles to begin with. This, as
we have seen, was a point in common between them
and some early Cistercian churches. The nave at
Lilleshall was never provided with aisles: the same
thing happened at Kirkham, where the eastern arm
was fully aisled in the thirteenth century. In such
cases, where a nave had been originally planned
without aisles, no aisle could be added on the side
next the cloister without contracting the cloister or
necessitating its rebuilding. Consequently aisleless
naves were left as they were or were enlarged by an
aisle only on the side which admitted of extension,
opposite the church. The nave with a single aisle,
although it is found in some Benedictine churches,
as at the priories of Abergavenny and Bromfield,
is certainly characteristic of churches of canons,
and may be explained on these grounds. Among
Augustinian examples are the churches of Bolton,
Brinkburn, Canons Ashby, Haughmond, Hexham (as
planned in the thirteenth century), Lanercost, Newstead,
Thurgarton and Ulverscroft: Dorchester, where
the broad south aisle is a westward continuation of
the original south transept, may be placed in the
same category. Premonstratensian churches of the
type were Coverham, West Langdon, Shap and Torre.
It has been suggested that this partial addition of
aisles may have been caused by the canons' desire to
rival aisled Benedictine churches. Large canons'
churches, however, such as those already mentioned, if
they were smaller than the great Benedictine churches,
were at any rate as completely planned; and it is
probable that the enlargement of aisleless naves was
merely the result of the inconvenience of the cramped
space, especially where new altars were needed. It
had nothing to do with the needs of parishioners:
only four out of the ten Augustinian, and none of the
Premonstratensian examples given above contained
parochial altars. The enlargement was frequently
achieved, as at Canons Ashby and Thurgarton, with
a beautiful and perfectly unambitious effect. At
Newstead, however, the builders, in projecting their
western façade, seem to have felt that the one-sided
plan hardly gave them an opportunity for the elevation
they wanted; and so they disingenuously balanced
the west front of their north aisle by building out a
screen-wall, similar in design, against the west wall
of the cloister buildings. This work, executed with
elaborate detail, shews that no funds can have been
wanting to build a south aisle, but that the sole
reason which prevented this was the inconvenience
which would have been caused to the cloister.
