LECTURE X.

The Transition.

IN commencing a series of lectures in my capacity as the official occupant of this professorial chair, I feel in some degree shackled by the circumstance that, though the office is new to me, its duties (so far as the lectures go) are not so: inasmuch as, during the latter years of the tenure of this office by our venerated Professor Cockerell, I was, in conjunction with Mr. Smirke, called upon to occupy the place from which ill-health and infirmity compelled him to be absent; and at a later time I have done the same for my immediate predecessor, Mr. Smirke, when circumstances interfered, for one season, with his lectures. I have, consequently, already given nine lectures from this chair without being its rightful occupant; and, now that I commence officially, I find the novelty of anything I might have had to say in a great degree worn off by anticipation. I have consequently been puzzled whether to begin afresh or to go on from the point I had reached. The former would, perhaps, be the most correct course; but, after long uncertainty, I feel it to be too artificial to sever what I said out of office from what I have to say in office, and I have determined to link my future lectures on to those which have preceded them. I shall also for the present limit myself to Mediæval architecture as the subject on which I have been engaged.

In my previous lectures I have given an outline of the development of Pointed architecture from the preceding round-arched style, and followed on with some practical suggestions as to the study of these phases of architecture. In them I have treated equally of foreign and English buildings, or have, perhaps, dwelt more at length on the former, and have carefully traced the connection of English with French architecture as they grew up, side by side, from the common germ, each to its glorious perfection.

I purpose now to fall back upon the commencement of this series of developments, and, while I go more in detail into the varied features of the architecture of these periods, to limit myself, during the present session at least, very much to its English productions.

My reason for this is, that we have of late been directing our attention too exclusively to foreign buildings, greatly to the neglect of our own,—so much so, that many of our architectural students seem to be as little acquainted with the Mediæval works of their own country as if they were brought up in Italy or France.

I hold the study of the contemporary buildings of neighbouring countries, especially those of France, to be essential to the due understanding of our own, and of the style as a whole; but this affords no excuse for the neglect of English architecture, to which, beyond all question, we are bound, as English architects, to direct our primary attention, and which will repay our study by a series of special beauties of its own, which have of late years been almost wholly overlooked.

In reviewing the changes in the architecture of our own country, it may be wholesome to begin early:—to “look at the rock whence we were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence we were digged.” A retrospect such as this gives rise to some curious reflections. At one time we feel perplexed by the depth of antiquity into which we are directing our view, and at another with the very reverse of this. When we go beyond the Norman Conquest,—beyond the destructive ravages of the Danes,—through the half-mythic times of the Heptarchy and the heroic age of the Pagan Saxons; and, again, beyond the destruction of the Roman arts; through the mystic and hazy age which intervened between the withdrawal of the Roman and the conquest by the Saxon; again, through the four centuries of Roman domination into the unknown abyss of prehistoric Britain, what a vast lapse of time does it represent! Yet the earliest period we thus reach is, nevertheless, some four centuries subsequent to the close of the Old Testament history and the period of Pericles and Phidias, and perhaps fifteen centuries subsequent to many of the great monuments of Egypt!

Archaic art seems to have the power of reproducing itself; and even the ages of heroic and barbaric myth may re-occur after periods in which society and civilisation may appear to have worn themselves out by over-refinement; and thus, when we attempt to trace out the early Christian architectural arts of the nations of Northern Europe, we find ourselves as much in the mist of antiquity as if we were prying into that which preceded the Pyramids or the earliest palace of Nimroud, though we are in reality examining works subsequent to the time when the empire of Rome fell to pieces from sheer old age.

In taking an enlarged view of Mediæval architecture, we must view it in two distinct but at the same time united aspects; we must view it as the architecture indigenous to the modern as distinguished from the ancient civilisation; but we must also view it as having been developed upon an antique nucleus.

There are also two other separate, though united, views which we ought to take of it. We should view it, on the one hand, as the work of men elaborating, as from the beginning, a new system of art on the mere reminiscences of an old and defunct system,—absolutely defunct as relates to the northern races,—but we should view it also as, all the while, aided by the yet living art of the Eastern Empire and by the smouldering embers of that of Rome itself.

In some districts there may have been a tradition remaining of some old method of building which had prevailed among the Pagan, Celtic, or Teutonic tribes; but the germ may generally be said to have been Roman or Byzantine, founded on reminiscences, and aided, from time to time, by direct communication.

The two great divisions of Mediæval architecture are, firstly, that which preceded, and, secondly, that which followed the great transition of the latter half of the twelfth century. The whole may be viewed as the one great development of arcuated construction into a style of art, and its two great divisions are the round-arched and the pointed-arched styles.

It is my purpose during the present session to limit myself very much to the former; but viewing it, not only in its own bearings, but also as the precursor of the latter. Though I intend to choose my illustrations almost wholly from buildings in our own country, it would be taking a very narrow view of our subject if we were to consider the great round-arched style otherwise than as a whole, and our own portion of it other than as a branch of that mighty bifurcated tree whose boughs, whether growing from its eastern or its western stem, spread themselves over the whole civilised world.

It has been well remarked, by Mr. Freeman, in his History of Architecture, that the ancient Roman manner of building was essentially an arcuated style, though its true character was artificially overlaid by the features belonging to the purely trabeated style of Greece; and that the whole course of change through which it, in after ages, passed, may be described as the gradual throwing off the trabeated overlayings and the perfecting into an architectural style its vital germ,—the arcuated system.

This process was carried on equally in the East as in the West, though under circumstances accidentally differing. The two great metropolises of the Christian Roman empire, commencing with the same architecture, gradually changed it into two distinct branches, though clearly belonging to the same great trunk. In both the changes or developments took for their starting-point the architecture, not of Greece, but of Rome. In the West, they continued to follow the natural suggestions of that style, influenced deeply by the changed religion, and subsequently curbed and held down, first by the removal of the seat of government to Constantinople, and then by the continuous waves of the northern invaders who gradually brought down to a very low ebb the civilisation and arts of the Western empire.

In the East, the influence of the Christian worship was at least equally deep; while the presence of the imperial court and government offered greater advantages to development, and the accidental preference for domed construction gradually gave a wholly new tone to the general character of the architecture, while the proximity of ancient Greek remains had a very strong influence on the ornamentation.

Different, however, as is the general aspect of a Byzantine and Romanesque building,—especially when the former assumes its crowning feature, the dome,—it cannot be denied that they are, nevertheless, the same style in two phases; and that there is no such contradiction between them as to forbid their amalgamation to any extent. In proof of this, we have the not incongruous character of the Crusaders’ buildings in the East, in which the dome was not forbidden; the similarity to Romanesque of such of the Byzantine buildings as do not happen to have domes; the introduction into France of the domed architecture by a colony of Greeks; the admission of much that is Byzantine into the Romanesque buildings of Germany; and finally, the very extensive use of purely Byzantine foliage and other forms of ornamentation into the buildings of Western Europe in the twelfth century. This last-named circumstance I have dwelt upon at length in one of my former lectures, and I shall, no doubt, have frequent occasions again to allude to it. The fact is, that the ornamentation of the later examples of the Romanesque style is for the most part rather Byzantine than Roman in its origin: even the acanthus-leaves in the capitals and cornices more resembling those of the monument of Lysicrates than those of any Roman building; while the surface ornaments—so profusely used—are often traceable to the patterns of the various manufactures of the East, so largely imported into Western Europe.

Much light has recently been thrown upon the Byzantine style, especially in respect of its secular productions, through the discovery by the Count de Vogüé of a vast number of ruined towns in the mountains of Central Syria, which have remained almost untouched (except by time and earthquakes) just as they were deserted in the seventh century on the approach of the first Mahometan invaders. These remarkable remains give us the connecting link between Classic and Mediæval art, though greatly influenced by the traditional mode of building belonging to Syria. It is a subject which would need a separate lecture to deal with it as it deserves, and I only mention it here for the sake of saying that the carved ornamentation of these remarkable buildings is Greek in its feeling,[1] and not Roman, and that it is evidently allied to that imported at a much later period into Western Europe; and which especially characterises the buildings of the twelfth century in France, and (though less constantly) in England; all tending to establish the essential unity of the round-arched architecture of the early Middle Ages, and the fact that the East and the West were much more united in artistic affinity than has generally been admitted.

My main object at the present time is to trace the history, and investigate the character of those branches of this great round-arched style which have developed themselves in our own country: and my purpose in the foregoing remarks has been to lead you to view our own architecture, not as an essentially separate style, but as a part of that which pervaded Christian Europe, and extended till the Mahometan invasion, far both into Asia and Africa, which was the nucleus even of the Mahometan styles, and which in Sicily (as in the Holy Land and in Spain) again met and coalesced with its infidel offshoot, and produced by this reunion the noble architecture of Palermo, and other cities of Northern Sicily.

Among all the races of Northern Europe, who were either conquered by Rome, or aided in the overthrow of her empire, I do not know that any has left a vestige of what may be viewed as indicating, in any intelligible manner, the previous existence among them of a distinctive style of architecture. Stonehenge and the cromlechs can hardly be viewed as exceptions; and, when the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, they found, so far as we know, no architecture but the Roman, nor brought with them any of their own; while, to make matters worse, they seem to have devoted themselves to the destruction of what they found.

What was the character of their buildings while they continued Pagan, we have no means of judging. We have proofs that timber was their most customary material, though it would be unreasonable to suppose that they were unable to build in stone. It is likely enough that their houses were generally of wood, for such was the case throughout the Middle Ages, and continues to be so to this day, where timber is abundant. Many of the churches afterwards were of the same material; but such also has at all periods been the case when dictated by local circumstances, and is still frequent in our colonies, so that it is insufficient to disprove the contemporary use of stone.

There is a curious parallelism in this respect between the buildings of ancient Greece, of Etruria, and of England. In Greece we find clear proofs of the architectural style having been founded on timber construction, though the Cyclopean walls, etc., of the primæval cities (whether the works of the same or a different race) forbid the thought that the use of stone was ever unknown. In Etruria we find no less gigantic walls, though we learn from Vitruvius that timber entered largely even into the construction of their temples, and suggested the peculiarities of the Tuscan order. If, then, in Saxon England we find the words “to build” to be derived from timber;—if we learn from early writers that the majority of their buildings were of wood; and if we find in their stone buildings indications of their imitating the construction of timber framing, we need no more conclude that our forefathers were ignorant of stone building, where it was needful, than that the early Greeks or Etrurians used timber from ignorance of the use of stone.

They were colonists, though conquerors. They were, no doubt, but very partially civilised; and, settling down as strangers in a country from which they had driven out the old inhabitants, and whose towns they had in great measure destroyed, they were likely (as colonists do in our own day) to make the largest use of the material most ready to their hand, and to defer to more settled times the use of a more permanent manner of building.

The paucity of remains of buildings of the period between the dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West and the eleventh century, is by no means peculiar to our own country. Throughout Northern Europe the same fact prevails. The earlier waves of northern invaders were absorbed in the old civilisation, but each successive wave made a deeper and a deeper inroad into the remaining arts of the old world. It was natural then, that, on the return of art and civilisation, the works of this dark period should be deemed unworthy of preservation, and were replaced by new erections. In our own country the Romans had not been overcome, but had simply withdrawn, so that the dissolution of art was a more rapid work than in most other parts of the old empire, while the early efforts of the Saxons were over and over again destroyed by the yet uncivilised and unchristianised Scandinavians, from the last of whose devastations there was hardly time to recover before the Anglo-Saxon monarchy was overthrown by the Normans. No wonder, then, that the conquerors, though but then become adepts in architecture themselves, should disdainfully reconstruct nearly all the churches and greater edifices of their predecessors in that new manner of building in which they had been so recently instructed, and for the carrying out of which their conquest had supplied them with such ample means.

It would be a curious and interesting investigation to trace out the history of what may be styled the Primitive Romanesque architecture of Northern Europe; or, in other words, to examine into the style of building which prevailed during the long interval between the overthrow of the Roman power in the fifth century and the final establishment of that family of nations which for the last eight or nine centuries has been the embodied representative of Europe.

The thousandth year of our era seems as if it were the beginning of a new state of things: as if what succeeded it were in the open daylight, while the six preceding centuries could only be viewed by the glimmer of twilight. This is especially the case as regards our own art. How little do we know of the architecture of Western Europe, north of the Alps, during that long interval! Only here and there a building equally obscure in character and date,—a dull ray of light only just sufficing to render the darkness visible. No doubt a careful investigation would increase the number of known examples on the Continent. At present they are but few, such as the Basse-œuvre at Beauvais; the Church of St. Jean at Poictiers; that of Quenqueville in Normandy; the church at Lorsch, on the Rhine, and the older parts of St. Pantaleon at Cologne; all of which possess a character so distinct from that which prevails among the buildings of succeeding times as quite to sever from all which followed the architecture of these primitive ages,—this gulf which divides the ancient from the modern world.[2] Our business, however, at present, is not with the Continent, but with the sister islands of Britain.

The circumstances of the various portions of the British Isles differed in those early times so much one from another, that it is difficult to view them at all systematically. South Britain, early overspread with Roman art, civilised and Christianised, while Scotland and Ireland were yet barbarous and Pagan, became again, in its turn, both Pagan and barbarous when Ireland and Scotland had received the light of Christianity and civilisation.

Early in the fifth century these blessings had been conveyed to Ireland from then Christian Britain, and in the next century South Britain was sunk in almost impenetrable darkness, and was subsequently beholden to Ireland and the Irish race dwelling in Scotland, on the one side, and to missionaries from Rome on the other, for rekindling the extinguished lamp of religion and knowledge.

Of all the churches which must have existed in what is now England when inhabited by the old Britons, I am not sure that we possess a single relic; nor is there any certainty that even in Wales or Cornwall, where they were comparatively undisturbed, the case is much better. More curious still is the scarcity of early buildings in Scotland; though I shall be able to show you that some exceptions exist. Bede speaks of timber building as the “Mos Scotorum” and of stone building as “Mos Britonibus insolitus,” which may account for this dearth of objects of high antiquity. However this may be, we have to look mainly to Ireland for relics of the early modes of building among the British races; and here we happily find much to gratify our curiosity.

It was early in the fifth century that Patricius or St. Patrick (who describes himself as at once a Briton and a Roman), went from the northern parts of Roman Britain to instruct the then Pagan Irish, or, as they were more generally called, Scots. It was about the time when the invasion of Alaric had compelled the Emperor Honorius to withdraw his legions from Britain; and was, consequently, at the precise moment when our country was about to pass from the age of Roman subjection into that of mythic confusion,—beginning with the frightful devastations of the Picts and Scots, and subsequently of the Saxons; passing on through the semi-fabulous days of Vortigern, King Arthur, and Merlin, and ending with the flight of Cadwallader from desolated Britain; the driving out of the ancient inhabitants; the destruction of Christian churches and Roman cities, and the re-establishment of Paganism.

As there seems good reason to believe that, among the existing remains in Ireland, some are actually of the age of St. Patrick, it follows that in them we possess remains two centuries earlier than any left us by our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and that their type may be founded on that of the lost British buildings, though no doubt far humbler in scale and mode of building than those erected in South Britain with Roman aid. The Early Irish remains are mainly of three classes: the cells and other domestic buildings of the monks: the oratories and churches; and the round towers. The former class are of the rudest and most ascetic description, and seem to be founded on the customary dwellings of the Pagan inhabitants. The monks evidently eschewed all pretensions to personal comfort, and took up at once with the scale of dwelling common among their flock. They lived in stone huts, built without mortar, and vaulted over; more like ovens than human habitations, and so small as only to be sufficient for one person. With these they surrounded their churches, adding a few buildings, similar in character but somewhat larger, for more general purposes. Some, even of their oratories, were almost as pristine in their construction; and the churches themselves, though less rude, were of the most severe simplicity.

The form of dwelling indicated by the Cells or “Kills” which I have alluded to is not wholly alien to that still existing (or at least in use at the commencement of the present century) in the distant island of St. Kilda, excepting that the cells were for one person while the St. Kilda houses are for a family. Dr. Edward Daniel Clark thus describes these houses in 1797:—“The construction of their dwelling-houses differs from that of all the western islands. They consist of a pile of stones without cement, raised about 3 feet or 4 feet from the ground, forming a small oblong enclosure, over which is raised a covering of straw, bound together with transverse ropes of bent.... Round the walls of their huts are one or more arched apertures, according to the number of the family, leading to a vault, like an oven, arched with stone, and defended strongly from the inclemency of the weather; in this they sleep. I crawled on all-fours, with a lamp, into one of these, and found the bottom covered with heath; in this, I was informed, four persons slept. There is not sufficient space in them for a tall man to sit upright, though the dimensions of these vaulted dormitories varied in each hut, according to the number it was required to contain, or the industry of the owners.”

The central apartment he describes as without either chimney or window, but with two holes, some 7 inches square, to let out a little of the peat smoke.

There exists in the greater island of Arran, in the Bay of Galway, among many primæval antiquities, a house (Fig. 193), supposed to be of the Pagan period, which is thus described by Mr. Petrie, in his admirable work on the Ancient Architecture of Ireland:—“It is in its internal measurement 19 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches broad, and 8 feet high, and its walls are about 4 feet thick. Its doorway is but 3 feet high, and 2 feet 6 inches wide on the outside, but narrows to 2 feet on the inside. The roof is formed, as in all buildings of this class, by a gradual approximation of stones laid horizontally, till it is closed at the top by a single stone; and two apertures in the centre served the double purpose of a window and a chimney.”

The cells of the monks differed but little from this, excepting in being quadrangular within, though round or oval without. It would appear that some of the Irish monasteries had whole towns of such insulated cells, and it was from the great number of these erected by St. Columba that his name received the affix of “Kill,” and which caused his famous foundation in Iona to be called “I Colmkill.”

The earlier oratories seem frequently to have been a development of the construction of these cells, “built of uncemented stones admirably fitted to each other, and their lateral walls converging from the base to their apex in curved lines.”

These pristine oratories are surrounded by the cells and the graves of their founders and occupants, the latter inscribed with the cross. I give, from Mr. Petrie, a sketch of the oratory of St. Gallerus (Fig. 194), which he describes as, externally, 23 feet long by 10 feet broad, and 16 feet high to the external apex. It has a small doorway in the west end, and is lighted by a single window in the east end, which east gable was finished by a cross. Of very similar construction are several in Scotland and the Western Isles. Of these I have been enabled to give some illustrations, which are, in one respect, more complete than Mr. Petrie’s drawings, inasmuch as they are furnished with plans (Figs. 195, 196, 197).

“The early Irish churches are of two very simple types, being either oblong (Fig. 198), with a door at the west, and a window at the east end,—a mere development, with upright walls, of the oratories just described,—or a double oblong, forming a nave and chancel, and united by a chancel arch.... The one doorway is always west, and one of the windows to the east, though side windows are also introduced, all apparently without glass; the doorway usually square-headed, the windows round-arched, or triangular-headed.” “In all cases the sides of doorways and windows incline, like the doorways in the oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings, to which they bear a singularly striking resemblance.” “In the smaller churches the roofs were frequently formed of stone, but in the larger ones were always of wood.”

The doorways are, however, sometimes arched. The apsidal termination is, I believe, wholly unknown in these churches; and it would appear from this fact that the square end of the majority of English chancels is a tradition from the ancient British churches: the apse, which so frequently made its appearance and was again so frequently removed, being a foreign importation, against which the national feeling rebelled, as if opposed to local tradition. Of a piece with this feeling was the indignant protest of a Scotchman against the intention of one St. Malachy to erect a church in an unaccustomed style. “Good man, what has induced you to introduce this novelty into these regions? we are Scots, not Gauls; why this levity? Was ever work so superfluous, so proud!” This feeling, rather than the poverty of the country, may have occasioned the rigid severity of these early churches in Ireland, the largest of which rarely exceeded 60 feet in length,—the very length prescribed by St. Patrick for one of his churches, and which Mr. Petrie thinks was his usual dimension for churches of the largest class. This was also the length of the original church at Glastonbury, probably the first erected in Great Britain, while it differs but slightly from that of the naves of Brixworth Church, Worth Church, and that on the Castlehill at Dover, three of our oldest remaining pre-Norman English churches.

The difficulty naturally arising from the limited size of the churches and the unlimited numbers of the monks, appears to have been met by multiplying the number of the former. Thus we find several—up to seven—churches continually forming a single group. Just as at Glastonbury, there were at one time three in immediate proximity, though subsequently united into one.

Besides the more or less numerous cells which surrounded the churches, or groups of churches, there were usually houses for the abbots, hardly less ascetic in their construction than the cells of the monks; halls for strangers, refectories, and kitchens. Of the abbots’ houses we have several remaining, especially those of St. Columba at Kells, and of St. Kelvin at Glendalough. These were single rooms, about 18 feet to 25 feet long, by 15 or 16 feet wide, vaulted and covered by a stone roof, with a window and a door of very small size, all perfectly plain, but skilfully constructed.

All such groups of buildings were surrounded by a high and thick wall of defence, with strong gateways, and somewhere at hand was often erected a round tower, at once the bell-tower of the monastery and the place of refuge in case of attack.

We know nothing of the internal arrangement of the churches, excepting that in some cases there is a stone bench across the east end, the altar standing a little in advance; a square version of the Basilican arrangement; for, be it remembered, the apse possibly only came into use when secular Basilicæ were converted into churches, while those under consideration were probably founded upon the traditions of churches which existed in Britain before the time of Constantine, so that our English square east-end may after all be the more primitive type, and if such were the case, it would appear that the seats of the clergy were at first along the eastern wall and behind the altar, as in the apsidal churches. To these views, however, I will not pledge myself, as we do not know how soon apses came into use.

This system, too, of erecting monasteries, not with general dormitories, but with numerous private cells, seems to have been founded on the early Eastern form, of which so many existed in the deserts of the Thebaid, and of which many ancient notices exist. The most perfect remaining specimen of this kind of monastery in Ireland is one on a most minute scale founded by St. Fechin, in the seventh century, in the almost inaccessible island of Ardoilen, off the coast of Connemara, which, excepting only that all its buildings are vaulted, agrees almost precisely with Bede’s description of that founded about the same time in the island of Farne, on the Northumbrian coast, by St. Cuthbert, himself a Scot or perhaps an Irishman. Those in the north of Ireland and in Scotland seem to have been usually of timber, “more Scotorum,” as Bede says, and have consequently perished; but in the south and west of Ireland they were of stone, and remain, in many instances, in a more or less complete state to our own day.

Some, however, in Scotland, were of stone, like those of Ireland.

It was in these establishments,—so severely simple in their architecture,—that the lamp of piety and learning was preserved during the darkest period of our history; sending forth its light not only among the British islands but to Continental Europe; and here were followed up even the decorative arts,—as illumination, embroidery, and jewellery. Such, no doubt, was the famous monastery of Iona, which, as an able historian says, “soon became, morally and religiously, a spectacle as glorious as any that Christendom could afford.... The school, of whatever knowledge, sacred or profane, was then within the reach of the northern people,—the nursery of many arts, the centre of a Christian colony, and the mother of priests and missionaries.”

It was on landing here that Dr. Johnson exclaimed:—“We are now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion.... That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”

At somewhat later periods the severity of the Irish architecture became gradually relaxed, while its leading types remained unaltered. As the dates of the more decorative buildings are unsettled, I will not enter upon the discussion how far their ornamentation was indigenous, and how far derived from other countries. Towards the Norman period, we find features agreeing with the details of that style united with Irish forms and mixed with ornamental details,—such as those which decorate the well-known Irish crosses, and are common on the monumental slabs in the monastic cemeteries. We also find the jambs of doorways, windows (Fig. 200), and chancel arches, losing the square form extending through the thickness of the walls, which characterises the earlier examples (like those of our own Anglo-Saxon buildings), and becoming divided into separate orders, with decorative mouldings, and shafts with caps and bases, and thus exhibiting the most important elements of the advanced Romanesque and “Gothic” styles. These features increase in distinctness till we reach examples known to be contemporary with our own Norman works, and culminate in the charming Chapel of St. Cormac at Cashel, which, though in outline evincing an adherence to Irish tradition, is in all its details distinctly Norman, and is known to have been erected in the twelfth century. Mr. Petrie thinks that these decorative features are in many instances of very early date. I cannot quite agree with him where Norman details appear; for, though a system of ornamentation may appear early in a particular country, it is impossible that it should anticipate the precise forms elaborated much later by a regular course of progression elsewhere.

There is in Scotland at least one specimen of parallel character to these later of the old Irish churches. I allude to the church of St. Regulus, which stands side-by-side with the cathedral at St. Andrews; just as that of St. Cormac does with the cathedral at Cashel.

Mr. Billings has given a good view of this interesting, and, I may say, beautiful, remain; and I am enabled, by the kindness of a friend (Mr. R. Anderson, of Edinburgh), to show you detailed drawings of it. It consists either of a nave (with chancel arch) and a western tower, or of a chancel with apse arch and a central tower, in which latter case it would be parallel to the remains of Jarrow Church. In the other case, it may have had a lofty western porch, as had those of Wearmouth and Barton-upon-Humber. The large western arch in the tower must have opened into either a nave or a porch; and, as this is actually larger than the chancel arch, and the mark of the roof of equal height, it certainly suggests a nave. Its workmanship is of a very superior character: and its details, though plain and archaic, are very good. The tower is of great height, evidently, like many other early towers in Scotland, founded on the idea of the early campaniles of Italy. The capitals of shafts closely resemble those of St. Pantaleon at Cologne,[3] which are of the tenth century. I find it difficult to conjecture the age of this church; but, I imagine it to be anterior in its date to the introduction of Norman architecture into England. It is said that when the surrounding ground was excavated the foundations of an apse were found.

I will not dwell on the Irish crosses, and the round towers,—time not permitting,—though both are among the most remarkable features of early Irish art. The towers agree precisely in their architectural details with the churches, and never appear but in connection with them. They are known in the Irish language by a name signifying a belfry, and were no doubt the campaniles of the monasteries, their unique type showing the originality of invention of these early architects. Their doors were placed at a considerable height for the sake of security; they were divided into several stories, each with a single window except the upper one, which had four or more,—all pointing out their double object of bell towers and places of defence. Two similar towers remain in Scotland.

The Irish and Iona crosses are works of extreme beauty, and of very decorative detail. I shall have to allude to their anti-types in England when speaking of Anglo-Saxon architecture, to the consideration of which I will now proceed.

The subject of the architecture of pre-Norman England,—that is to say, of England (exclusive of Wales and the counties occupied by the Britons), between the arrival of Augustine in 596, and that of William of Normandy in 1066,—a period exceeding by ten years the interval between the reigns of Edward III. and Queen Victoria,—has been held by some to be involved in such utter obscurity as to leave it uncertain whether any such architecture existed, or, at least, whether we have any means of ascertaining what it was; and yet no period of history is, perhaps, more replete with accounts of the foundation of cathedrals, monasteries, and churches. The cause of this is clear. The churches of this period were, no doubt, frequently of timber; but, of whatever material, were subjected,—first to the destructive effects of the repeated devastations of the Danes, and subsequently to the greater architectural ambition of the Normans which led to a perfect mania for reconstruction. The consequence is, that we have no cathedral or great abbey or church remaining of this period, and have to content ourselves with such evidences of their style as may be gleaned from among ordinary parish churches for the most part in rural districts, and consequently of the humbler class.

The historical notices of the erection of churches during the Anglo-Saxon period are more frequent than descriptive.

On the arrival of Augustine, he found the Church of St. Martin, Canterbury, already used by the Christian Queen Bertha. This was, no doubt, a Romano-British structure. He found also a second, but in ruins; and this he made the nucleus of his metropolitan cathedral. He constructed also a third, afterwards called by his own name. We know, too, that in his day were also founded the cathedrals of Rochester and London; and there is no reason to doubt that all of these were of stone. I am not aware that we hear anything more, in Anglo-Saxon days, of St. Martin’s, or that we have any description of St. Augustine’s, but we have a strong light thrown on the subsequent history of the cathedral up to the Norman Conquest in the writings of one Eadmer, a singer at the cathedral, who wrote early in the twelfth century.

Recapitulating the account of its having been erected by St. Augustine on the site of a Roman church, he proceeds to say that in the days of Archbishop Odo, in the tenth century, the roof had become so decayed as to require renewal; that Odo took the opportunity of increasing the height of the walls, and that the work occupied three years. He also tells us that a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist had been added by Archbishop Cuthbert in the eighth century near the east end of the Church, for baptisms, etc. He says that the church escaped the destruction threatened by the army of King Sweyn in 1011; but was subsequently burnt down by accident, and remained in ruins until rebuilt by Lanfranc.

He further gives a very clear description of the church, from which it appears that it was built in some degree on the model of the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. He minutely describes the eastern altar space as greatly raised above the general level of the church, and having beneath it a crypt or confessionary, made in the likeness of that of St. Peter’s at Rome. He further describes an oratory and altar to St. Mary at the western end raised on steps, behind which was the pontifical throne. Also two towers, the one on the north and the other on the south side of the nave, projecting beyond the aisles, and containing chapels.

Professor Willis, in his admirable history of the cathedral, gives an able dissertation on its plan at this period, showing how precisely the description of the eastern arrangements agree with those of the Basilica of St. Peter, but that the Chapel of the Virgin at the west end must have been a western apse, like those so common in Germany, and of which we have an earlier instance in the ancient design for the arrangements of the monastery of St. Gall, supposed to be of the eighth century. Eadmer confirms his account by saying that he can answer for its correctness, for he saw the ruins himself when a boy at school.

From the above description we learn, first, that a Roman model was taken; secondly, that the church was of stone or brick; thirdly, that it had aisles; fourthly, that it had both an eastern and western apse; beneath the former of which was an extensive crypt, called a confessionary, as containing the tombs of confessors.

The additional church of St. John was clearly a baptistery; and Professor Willis thinks that Archbishop Odo’s addition to the height of the walls was a clerestory.

I am not aware that we have any information as to the cathedrals built by the companions of Augustine (Mellitus and Justus) at London and Rochester; but it is unlikely that they would be otherwise than of cognate plan and materials; while, curiously enough, there continues to this day at Rochester, and continued to the seventeenth century in our own St. Paul’s, equally as at Canterbury, a crypt beneath the elevated sanctuary, no doubt the lineal successor and representative of those erected by these missionary bishops, in imitation of the great basilica at Rome, whence they had been sent to evangelise this distant region.

A few years later Paulinus, another Roman missionary, succeeded, under circumstances very similar, in converting to Christianity Edwin, king of Northumbria, who, while receiving instructions preparatory to his baptism, built a temporary church of timber at York; but subsequently erected, around the same, and under the instructions of Paulinus, a larger and nobler church of stone, which was completed by Oswald, his successor. Here, again, we have still remaining the choir-crypt,—the probable successor of that of the original church, and as some say, containing a relic of its actual structure. Thus, we have the two metropolitan cathedrals distinctly recorded as erected of stone by their first bishops.

Bede also relates that Paulinus built a stone church, of beautiful workmanship, at Lincoln, the walls of which remained at the time he wrote, though, by some mischance, it had lost its roof. It is clear, however, that some of Paulinus’s churches were of timber, and, later on, we find St. Aidan and St. Finan,—missionaries from Iona,—erecting a cathedral of that material in the Island of Lindisfarne “more Scotorum.”

Shortly afterwards, however, a church was built, after the monastic rule of Lindisfarne, but of stone, at Lastingham, in Yorkshire; where, again, we find the choir-crypt,—the successor of the original one,—remaining to this day. Still, in the seventh century, we have a more minute account given us by Bede of the works of Benedict Biscop, in the erection of the monastic church of Monk Wearmouth. This church he built of stone, “according to the manner of the Romans, which he had always loved.” He built, also, the church at Jarrow of the same material, and the existing remains of both I shall have presently to describe. So much did he consider himself a follower of the Roman manner, that he went, over and over again, to Rome, to procure ornaments wherewith to decorate his two churches. This was about 670 and 680.

The successor of Benedict Biscop is said to have sent architects to Naitan, king of the Picts, to make him a church of stone after the manner of the Romans.

About the same time we find St. Wilfrid thoroughly repairing, glazing, and “washing whiter than snow,” Paulinus’s Church, at York, and building two of great splendour (according to the ideas of the times), at Hexham and Ripon.

The former is described by a contemporary writer in ecstatic language, as “supported by various pillars and porticoes, adorned with a marvellous length and height of walls, and with passages of various turnings; nor was it ever,” he adds, “heard that such another church was erected on this side the Alps. He tells us also, of its ornaments of gold and silver and precious stones,” and of its altar, clothed with purple and silk hangings. This church remained, though in a damaged state, till the twelfth century, when the Norman prior describes it in very similar words to those used by the old Saxon historian. He speaks of the crypts and subterranean oratories, the walls of great height, “divided into three distinct stories supported by polished columns, some square, and others of various forms,” of the “capitals of the columns” ... and “the arch of sanctuary,” as “decorated with histories and images and different figures carved in relief in stone and painted, displaying a pleasing variety and wonderful beauty.” The body of the church was “surrounded by aisles and porticoes, which with wonderful art were divided above and below by walls and winding stairs.” Above he describes “galleries of stone,” by which “a vast multitude of persons might be there and pass round the church without being visible to any one in the nave below.”

Of the church at Ripon, the contemporary historian says that “he [St. Wilfrid] erected and finished at Ripon a basilica of polished stone from its foundations in the earth to the top, supported on high by various columns and porticoes.”

This church, founded by Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, was in the tenth century “reduced by wars and hostile incursions to a deserted and ruined solitude.”

All the buildings of the erection of which I have briefly enumerated the records, were founded within a century of the arrival of St. Augustine. Within the same century (about 680) we have reason to believe was erected the church at Brixworth, in Northamptonshire, which still remains in a fragmentary state, but, as I shall presently show, with sufficient proofs of its having been founded on the plan of a Roman basilica, with an aisled nave and an unaisled choir, an apsidal and aisled sanctuary raised high on a vaulted crypt. This church was but a humble dependency of the great monastery of Peterborough.

I would not have fatigued you with these documentary accounts, had I not felt it desirable to prove the importance of these earliest temples of our English Church. Cathedrals, churches, and monasteries were, in fact, built throughout the length and breadth of now Christianised England. The more important buildings were all, no doubt, of stone; many of the humbler ones of timber.

But times of trouble were at hand: “there is a time to break down” as well as “a time to build up;” and what the Christian English had built, the Pagan Northmen too often overthrew. Thus, in Alfred’s time (though in the reign of his predecessor), we find Croyland, Peterborough, Ely, and other monasteries ruthlessly destroyed, and in some cases they lay desolate for very long periods of time, though in others they were speedily restored.

At a later period, a new impulse was given to building by the introduction of the Benedictine order, and we find monasteries either founded or reformed on this rule throughout the kingdom.

Two descriptions of such Benedictine churches I will quote, the first being from the history of Ramsey Abbey, in the time of Dunstan.

The architect’s name is, for a wonder, mentioned in this case: it was Ædnoth, and he came, as it would seem, from Worcester. The church is said to have had “two towers rising above its roof. The smaller of these towards the west, in front of the Basilica, presented a fine spectacle from a distance to those entering the island. The larger one was in the centre of the square, standing upon four columns connected by arches stretching from aisle to aisle.” This laconic description seems to indicate a church with aisles, transepts, central tower, and a western tower. It may be, however, that the word “ala” signifies not an aisle, but merely a transept.

The other church I will refer to under this head is the Cathedral of Winchester, as rebuilt in the reign of Edgar. It had been founded in the days of St. Birinus, the first missionary to the West Saxons, about 635. Athelwold, made Bishop of Winchester in 963, was a great restorer of churches which had been devastated by the Danes. Among those restored by him may be especially named those of Ely and Peterborough. He renovated and partly rebuilt his own cathedral at Winchester, which was rededicated in 980. It is described by Wolstan, in a poem addressed to the succeeding Bishop, St. Elphege. He speaks of the “lofty walls and solid aisles, and various arches; the many chapels which so distract the attention, that a stranger is at a loss which way to turn, seeing doors open to him on all sides.” He mentions also the “fine roofs of intricate structure, and the brilliant variety of the fabric.” St. Elphege seems to have added a new apse, with “secret crypts, where secret recesses lay on every side, the structure of which supported the holy altar, and the venerable relics of the saints.” “A sparkling tower,” also, “that reflects from heaven the first rays of the sun.” “It has five compartments pierced by open windows, and on all four sides as many ways are open. The lofty peaks of the tower are capped with pointed roofs, and are adorned with various and sinuous vaults, curved with well-skilled contrivance. Above these stands a rod with golden balls, and at the top a mighty golden cock, which boldly turns its face to every wind that blows.”

Again, however, came the ruthless Northman, and destroyed church after church throughout the entire course of his desolating march.

No former incursion probably had been so fatal to architecture as that of Sweyn. Its very success, however, brought its own cure; for his son Canute, being allowed to succeed to the English throne, not only became Christian, but devoted himself with exemplary piety to repairing the devastations which the sacrilege of his father and himself had perpetrated. He not only repented, but brought forth fruits meet for repentance; so that the last half-century of the history of the pre-Norman England, is replete with accounts of the restoration and building of churches.

The foregoing notices are sufficient to show that throughout the continuance of the pre-Norman English Church buildings were constantly being erected of considerable dimensions and sometimes of great intricacy, and even of some degree of splendour of design; and that the more important of these were uniformly of stone, though the humbler ones were often of timber. It further shows that the architectural style of these buildings, as well as the internal arrangement of the churches, was intended to be an imitation of the Roman buildings of the same period.

We will now proceed to inquire into the existence and character of any remains of buildings of this period.

Of the important structures, I may say at once that nothing remains; the ambitious character of the Norman builders having led them to reconstruct on a larger scale all the cathedrals and great monastic churches, excepting, indeed, that one which they found in course of re-erection at Westminster, and which was designed in their own style.

There exist, however, throughout the length and breadth of the land, remnants, and, in a few instances, large portions, of buildings of a wholly exceptional character; not assignable to the Norman or any other of the well-known styles which have prevailed in England; but evidently of earlier date. They are clearly not early Norman; for, with the single exception of the round arch, they have nothing in common with the specimens of that style erected in the reign of the Conqueror, but are clearly of a style quite distinct from them. In one instance, we have a tower known to have been erected in the days of the Conqueror, in juxtaposition with the remains of a church in this more ancient style; and in many other instances we have Norman features in connection with these mysterious remains, and to every eye asserting the entire diversity of their art. In some instances, again, as at Monk Wearmouth, Jarrow, Brixworth, and Deerhurst, the remains of this style are on the sites where churches are recorded to have been built in Anglo-Saxon days. These remains correspond in character with buildings represented in Saxon illuminated books. They evince in many instances evidence of having been built in rude imitation of the Roman works of those periods, though in some instances they seem also to suggest the imitation of timber construction.

The most obvious rules of induction, then, point to the conclusion that these are the remains of buildings of Anglo-Saxon date.[4]

The leading characteristics of these remains (though not all of them to be found in every instance, and probably varying with the date) are as follows:—The frequent decoration of the external walls with pilaster strips, as is so common in early Italian churches, and afterwards in Germany; the bonding of these by alternate vertical and horizontal stones; the imitation of this mode of bonding in quoins where no such strips are used, and in the jambs of doorways and other openings, excepting where Roman brick is of frequent occurrence; the jambs of doorways running square through the thickness of the wall, without recessed orders, and the door itself hung against the inner face of the wall; the frequent use of a kind of pilaster on either side both of doorways and archways, the impost moulding sometimes breaking round, and sometimes stopping against them, and a continuation of the pilaster going round the arch;[5] the occasional use of triangular heads to doors and windows; the use of what are called baluster columns, or short pillars, turned in a lathe, not unlike Elizabethan balusters, bulging in the middle and ornamented with a number of mouldings of trifling relief, such as turners of all ages delight in (these are used for the division of windows, and other purposes); the windows which are usually set high in the wall, are often equally splayed within and without, and the arches sometimes more splayed than the jambs, and slanting upwards like an old-fashioned bonnet; a very abnormal kind of mouldings, unlike those of any other style, and generally a very strange archaic look in the whole of the work, which makes one conscious of being in the presence of the works of men in a very pristine state of civilisation, the style having little or no relationship to those Mediæval buildings with which we are familiar.

I ought, also, to mention the frequent use of tall, narrow towers, unbroken, or nearly so, in their vertical outline, either simply quoined with the long and short work already mentioned, or with their surfaces diversified by pilaster strips and string-courses, the intervening surfaces being usually built of rubble and plastered. The belfry-windows are often of two lights, separated by a baluster or other form of pillar set in the middle of the wall, and bearing a transverse bracket of stone, to enable it to support the whole thickness of the wall. Such towers are clearly imitations of the Italian campanile, though in a rude form. They occasionally have oblique strips as well as the vertical pillars and horizontal strings, which suggest the idea of an imitation of timber-work; at other times the pilasters are united by arches.

It is not easy to describe the general plans of churches, as the remains we possess are too scanty to be generalised upon. Some had aisles, some transepts without aisles, many had neither. One, at least, has a central tower without transepts; and at least one a central tower with transepts. Some had apsidal chancels, and some had the square end. The towers, in a great majority of instances, are at the west end. The walls are in some cases by no means low, and the naves occasionally of greater width than is usual in village churches of later periods.

What forms are made use of for pillars we are but imperfectly aware. One of the notices I have quoted speaks of their being square and of other forms. The few which remain in situ are of the former kind, mere fragments of wall: but at Worth Church there are, in the jambs of the chancel arch, half pillars, 2½ ft. in diameter, with very perfect capitals; and certainly an entire pillar of this form must have suggested the demi-column. At Canterbury there are two round columns brought from Reculver, which are probably of Anglo-Saxon date. Their capitals are of the most remarkable form.

I will make special mention of a few pre-Norman churches and fragments of churches as specimens; but to do more in a lecture such as this would be both tedious and unprofitable; for, however interesting the study of the primæval architecture of our race, it must be confessed that, while in general plan these churches are the progenitors of those we think worthy of imitation, we cannot venture to say so much of their details.