The Anglo-Saxon doorway would, in all probability, be an arched opening straight through the wall, the door hanging against the inner face (Fig. 232). It may or may not be relieved by a pilaster strip on either side, and an impost to crown the pier, leaving it still a very primitive and inartistic composition, with the door itself dealt with as if it had been forgotten and no provision made for it. We will suppose the Norman doorway to be of the same width and height with the Saxon one (Fig. 233). Its reveal, to begin with, is reduced to perhaps one-fifth of the thickness of the wall, and the door itself placed at such a distance from the exterior as the architectural grade aimed at may dictate, and this distance is divided into so many orders or recesses (each some 8 or 10 inches in depth in a moderate doorway) as may be thought best. These arched rims or orders may be either left plain or may be moulded, or otherwise decorated at pleasure. The jambs of such a doorway may be treated in several different ways. The simplest is to make the jambs continuous with the arch, with or without the interposition of an impost. A second mode is to substitute a shaft or decorative column, for one or all of the orders, excepting, generally, that with which the door itself comes in contact. Add to this an outer or drip moulding to sever the arch from the wall face, and you have the elements of a really well-considered and artistic doorway. Internally, the remaining thickness of the wall is arched in another order (either square or sloping), which arch has to spring at a higher level to avoid the catching against it of the door while opening.

A doorway thus constructed may be clothed with what decorations you think good; and, if you are working in the Pointed style, the principle applies just as well as in Norman; indeed, we have here the principles of nearly all good doorways, whether Romanesque or Gothic (Fig. 234).

I have already described the application of the principle to an archway, which in its elementary form is merely the outer jamb of a doorway repeated on both sides of the wall. A shaft or demi-shaft may be substituted for the central order, or, if the wall be a little thicker, this shaft may be doubled; or, if thicker still, there may be two orders on either side of the wall besides the central one, or other obvious combinations may be made, rendering the archway, instead of a mere crude opening, an artistic composition, though trusting for its effect to a perfectly reasonable constructive system.

I will now suppose two such openings brought so closely together as to leave only a short space of wall between. We have then two such systems of recesses brought into close contact, making either a plain pier of comparatively sightly form, such as those at St. Alban’s; or, if shafted, we at once obtain the great feature of Gothic architecture, the clustered pier.

In cases where it was preferred to support the adjoining springings of two arches upon a single column, though the arch was sometimes left undivided, the same system of sub-orders was more usual. In this case if the abacus remained square, its angles, being unoccupied, would present a clumsy appearance. This led to the breaking of the capital into orders, though resting upon a single shaft, or the abacus was made round or octagonal.

Such a column as this often alternated between two clustered piers, making an extremely agreeable group.

The developments I have described—so logical in their motive that one fancies that one might have originated them all by a mere process of inductive reasoning—supply nine-tenths of all the elements of the perfected Romanesque style.

Extend, now, the same principles to a vaulted space which we have hitherto applied only to an arcaded wall, and we gain another great instalment of the elements of the style by a simple process of reasoning.

The normal form of groined or intersecting vaulting,—the simplest manner in which a large space may be arched over in moderate spans,—is, by the two or more intersecting vaults, springing directly from a square pier (Fig. 235). Now, this is not only inartistic, but is bad in construction. The line of intersection is necessarily weak, and the vault requires aid to make it perfect in construction; and this can only be given it in the form of increased thickness, which is at once obtained by altering the form of the pier from a square to a cross form, and applying to the vault the same principle of divided orders as we have done before to arches (Fig. 236); only that, in this case the upper order is a vault, and the lower one only an arched rib coming in to aid the vault. The groined vault is thus divided into compartments, and beauty and strength at once provided for. This elementary form may be decorated in a multitude of ways.

The mere addition of an impost and a base to the pier does much to relieve its plainness. We may, however, as in the case of arches, substitute shafts for the divisions of the pier, or double shafts where the ribs are wide; or we may, instead of amplifying the forms of the pier, concentrate it to a column, from whose capital the ribs spring, as we have already seen in case of the double arch.

When groining springs from a wall, nearly the same system applies, excepting that one division only of the pier is needed instead of all four. Thus the simplest provision is a mere projecting pilaster, carrying the cross ribs, the wall itself taking the place of the lateral ones. This pilaster may be converted into a shaft or a double shaft, or the rib may be amplified by a central semi-roll moulding, and the whole carried by a triple shaft or other combinations, or a corbel substituted for the pilaster or group of shafts. Thus we have vaulting reduced to a principle which, however plain, is at once artistic and constructionally good, and is susceptible of all degrees of ornamentation.

What I have said of doors applies equally to windows, subject to some modifications arising from their practical requirements. The simplest form of an arched opening, going square through the wall, is eminently unsuited to a window; and this is so obvious that it has rarely been used at any period, for the square edges of a thick wall evidently prevent the light from diffusing itself in the interior.

The most favourable forms are those in which the jambs are sloped, either directly from the exterior inwards, or from some intermediate point, both inwards and outwards, so as to give the freest scope for the rays of light. In this respect I have nothing to say against the forms customary in the previous style.[19]

The Norman windows are of great variety. The simplest, which is prevalent in very homely buildings (as may be seen in many extremely humble churches on the cliff between Dover and Deal), is an opening with no external recess, but splaying at some 45 degrees inward, the glass being flush with the exterior. From this we have every variety of architectural grade; first, a chamfer or moulding added to the exterior; then, two orders, plain or moulded; or a shaft may be substituted for the outer order in the jamb, or the same repeated, as in doorways. Internally, the thickness of the walls continues to be splayed so as to diffuse the light, though in buildings of a high architectural class, mouldings or divided orders (with or without shafts) may enrich the inner angle, or may even take the place of the splay altogether.

In domestic windows two or more openings are often used externally, divided by a little column, the whole being internally united into a single opening. These are sometimes comprised on the exterior under a single arch to increase the architectural effect.[20] The same is also used for belfries and other positions where use dictates it.

I have now shown you that doors, windows, archways, arcades, and vaulting were generated, as to their architectural treatment, simply by the exercise of logical reasoning.

In the general treatment of the exterior of a building the same prevailed. The walls, being thick, needed little buttressing, and this little was supplied, and the flatness of the walls at the same time relieved, by a sort of pilaster or slightly projecting pier placed at reasonable intervals, which were united under the eaves, in many cases, by a row of corbels. The walls were further relieved by projecting base-courses, and string-courses under the window cills or elsewhere; and, in buildings of a higher class, by decorative arcading or other methods of raising its architectural character.

In all the foregoing particulars, it will be observed that I have stated nothing but what could be arrived at by simple and almost abstract reasoning, almost apart from anything which, strictly speaking, belongs to style of art. The results, indeed, apply equally to all the more perfect varieties of Romanesque, and follow from the mere thinking out of the subject; and if we desired to strike out some new variety of arcuated architecture, we could not do better than start from a point thus logically arrived at. To say that these are the leading characteristics of the Norman style, is saying at once too much and too little; for none of these characteristics would distinguish it from the Romanesque of Central France or Germany, which possess them equally with the Norman, while the latter certainly does possess features of its own, which would so distinguish it. These consist, however, for the most part, in the decorative details, and in the general composition of the buildings, but more particularly the latter; for, if the Rhenish, Central French, and Norman buildings were to exchange details, their composition would still distinguish them at a single glance, and each would be appropriated to its respective district in spite of any doubt about its details. The essential and logically derived elements are the same in all; the details, though united by a common bond of sentiment and feeling, differ in a certain degree,—while the customary forms of composition, though by no means contradictory, still differ so much as to leave no doubt about their being three, though evidently sister styles, or, rather, local varieties of the same great style.

Two very important features which Norman possesses, in common with other varieties of Romanesque, are, first, that, when a column is used for bearing weight, its diameter is made proportionate rather to its load than to its height; and, secondly, that columns are used also in a purely decorative capacity, and their diameter, in that case, is simply such as is best proportioned to their position; and most usually to the size of the arch-order they have, apparently, or really to carry.

We will now go into minor details.

The first purely decorative features which we may imagine to have been introduced,—if the logical scheme I have been supposing had been strictly followed out,—would be the base-course of a wall, the impost to sever the pier from the arch, and the drip, or label, to draw the line between the arch and the wall. These mouldings in their elementary forms are alike. In Anglo-Saxon they were usually square courses (Fig. 237); in Norman, their simple form is the same with the angle cut off (Fig. 238).

This form for the impost and the label was adopted also, very usually, for string-courses; but, in all positions, it was soon relieved by additional forms, as the double chamfer, the quirk, the quirk and hollow, and the round and hollow, or the cyma (Fig. 239).

The primary idea of a capital to a decorative shaft is that of a cubical block over which the impost returns. It is, in fact, the upper course of the square portion of the pier for which the shaft has been substituted, or out of the substance of which it is cut (Fig. 240).

The object, therefore, to be kept in view in designing the capital, is to devise the best method or methods of bringing about a transition from the cylindrical shaft to the square impost or abacus. The simplest form used in early Norman work is little more than the mathematical solution of the problem, which would be the frustum of an inverted cone intersected by the faces of the cube.

The elliptical sections thus generated being unsightly, they would soon be converted into semicircles; and as these will not fit themselves to the true cone, a group of portions of conoids is generated, meeting in an indented angle, such as we always find in these caps, excepting in the very earliest. At no period, however, were the reminiscences of the Corinthian capital wholly ignored; and we accordingly, even in the earliest examples (and perhaps as frequently in them as in later ones) find a rude imitation of its form.[21] At other times we find the block covered with carved scrollwork; and at others, again, the extreme simplicity is obtained by a mere portion of a cone or a simple moulding intervening between the shaft and the abacus, as in the Confessor’s buildings at Westminster, and in the crypt at Winchester.[22] The bases consisted usually of a moulding following the curve of the shaft, and resting upon a square plinth, beneath which was a sub-base. The mouldings of the base were very various: they seem to have been suggested by the varieties of the Roman base; but they often take other forms, as in the Confessor’s work at Westminster, where we have a mere splay and a double hollow. The orders of arches were sometimes relieved by being cut into large rolls; or the lower order in archways had a massive demi-roll attached to it. The roll was soon accompanied by a hollow, and these varieties almost exhaust the list of mouldings in the earlier examples, though we shall see that they subsequently increased into great multiplicity and beauty. Mouldings became, moreover, at an early date enriched. Thus we find the chamfers of a string or label relieved with the billet or short piece of roll left projecting from them at intervals. These chamfers are also enriched with chevrons of slight depth, such as masons sometimes impress in mortar with the point of their trowel. These simple ornaments, as we shall presently see, soon increased into endless variety.

The figure-sculpture of the period was of extreme uncouthness; often so much so as to be nearly unintelligible, though rapidly improving as the style advanced. The tympana of the doorways (which were sometimes filled in to the square, and sometimes to a low segmental arch line) were often filled with sculpture in slight relief. Heads were used as corbels (placed in a hollow moulding), and such rude art was introduced in other positions which might suggest it.

Soon it became frequent to relieve plain surfaces—whether to arch-orders, or elsewhere—with ornaments in very slight relief usually known as “surface ornaments,” which had the advantage of imparting decoration without disturbing essential forms. Of this, however, we shall see abundance as we proceed.

Having now traced out, by a system of rational induction, the essential elements of the style, we will proceed to some of the varieties of combination.

Let us take, in the first instance, a portion of the nave or choir of a church.

If this be unaisled and unvaulted, it is a very simple affair. Windows at a reasonable height, dealt with agreeably to the architectural grade of the building,—probably a base-course, a string beneath the cills, and possibly pilaster buttresses between the windows, and a corbel-table uniting the same under the eaves.

If vaulted with a wagon-vault (as, for instance, St. Cormac’s Chapel, at Cashel),[23] the walls must be higher, and, it may be, the dead space which this occasions externally may be decorated by arcading. If, however, it is groined, the difficulty disappears.

Again, an aisled but unvaulted nave is of simple construction, but if the aisle be vaulted (unless, indeed, it be a mere demi-vault, which in this country is very rare), a greater complication is brought into existence. The groining requires that the aisle wall shall be fully as high as the crown of the arches between the aisles and the nave; and, as the aisle roof demands some reasonable height, it follows that there must be a considerable space of wall above the arches. This may be dealt with in several ways. If the nave be unvaulted, it is a blank space, or may be pierced by an arcade or other openings. If the nave is groined without a clerestory, the space is partly occupied by the springers of the vaulting, and the intervals may be pierced. If there is a clerestory, the space becomes what we call (though erroneously), a triforium; or (whether there be a clerestory or not), it may be made more of and utilised by raising the aisle walls sufficiently to convert it into a second storey or gallery to the aisle (Fig. 241).

We possess a most complete instance of such an arrangement (though without a clerestory), in the chapel of the Tower of London,[24] where this space is made a gallery, covered with a wagon-vault and opens by a second tier of arches into the nave, which is itself covered by a similar vault. Had clerestory windows been in this case desired, the only change requisite would have been to groin the central space and the gallery, instead of giving them plain vaults, and we should then, with a trifle more height, have had a model, on a small scale, of the perfected arrangement of a vaulted and aisled church. Most, however, of our Norman churches in England are imperfect in two particulars as compared with this ideal. They have no groining to the central space, nor any vaulting to the gallery over the aisle. Several, as Durham and Lindisfarne, had the former, and Gloucester, and perhaps Tewkesbury, the latter; but I know of no existing church in England, nor of any perhaps of very early date, even in Normandy, which has both. The Tower chapel is the nearest approach; and, strange to say, the pre-conquestal example at Westminster appears (if I read the description aright) to have had all these features complete, the central space being vaulted, and the aisle also vaulted in two storeys. Such was often the case in Central France, even at an early date, as we see in the Church of St. Stephen at Nevers, erected about 1063, where we find groined aisles, aisle-galleries with the demi-vault, a clerestory, and above it a wagon-vault to the nave.

The churches at Nôtre Dame du Pont at Clermont, Issoire, and some others of about the same date in Auvergne, are one point less complete, having all the features I have enumerated excepting only the clerestory: nor do I know that there is any specimen so complete and of early date in Normandy, so that King Edward’s church seems to have gone ahead of its types in Normandy, and its model not to have been reached by its successors in England.

Those principles of combination being attained, it was easy to carry them out into a complete building.

A nave, such as I have described, may be either continued, with the intervention of a chancel arch, into the choir, and terminated by an apse; or two such ranges of buildings may be made to intersect, the crossing space being surmounted by a central tower, supported on four lofty arches and by massive piers. The east end would usually be terminated by an apse; the cross building, or transept, by gables; and the nave perhaps, by a gable flanked by two towers, which terminated its aisles, or projected beyond them. Transepts may have two aisles, as at Winchester and Ely; one, as at Durham and Peterborough; or none, as at Canterbury, St. Alban’s, and Norwich. In the latter case, apsidal chapels would probably project from its eastern face; and, if the choir aisle runs round the apse, similar chapels may open out of it.

This gives us the complete mechanical ideal of a great Norman church, though numerous are the varieties which it is capable of assuming.

I have occupied your time so long in my elementary investigation of the style that I must defer till my next lecture any attempt to describe its actual productions.

I will only now say that the vast scale and the endless number of the architectural works undertaken, and, in most cases carried out to completion by the early Norman builders, is such as to fill the mind with astonishment, when we contemplate them. Nearly every cathedral and great abbey was rebuilt on a stupendous scale; new cathedrals and new abbeys founded; and churches of all grades from these vast temples down to the smallest village church erected throughout the length and breadth of the country; while castles of the most portentous magnitude and prodigious solidity rose in all directions; the one class of building appearing to propitiate the divine aid, and the other to defy human opposition, as if the kingdoms both of heaven and earth were to “suffer violence,” and “the violent to take them by force.”

Few periods, probably, in the world’s history have been marked by the construction of buildings more multitudinous and more vast. Their architecture, as Mr. Freeman remarks, “majestic and awful rather than beautiful, no style is more truly religious or more imbued with the spirit and position of the church” (and one may add of the State) “in its own day,” nor has any age “produced structures whose number, size, splendour, and richness bear more honourable testimony to the zeal and bounty of their founders.”

LECTURE XII.

The Transition.

I have already spoken at some length of Lanfranc’s Cathedral at Canterbury, and of its identity, in general design, with the Conqueror’s Abbey Church of St. Etienne, at Caen. I shall have to revert to this cathedral more than once in describing additions and alterations of later date; but there are no remains of Lanfranc’s original work of sufficient importance to warrant me in occupying your time upon it.

I have also alluded to the chapel in the Tower of London: of this most perfect and typical example of the very early Norman, I exhibit some illustrations. Severely plain, as befitted the chapel of a fortress, it is, nevertheless, as complete and as well designed a building as could well be produced. Apsidal, with continuous aisles, in two storeys, and vaulted throughout the central space and the upper aisle by unribbed wagon-vaults, becoming in the former case semi-domical on reaching the apse, and the lower aisle groined, it is more perfect in ideal than the choir of any English or Norman church that I am acquainted with of its period, and is parallel in this respect with the great churches of Auvergne, only needing the clerestory to render it a complete type; a model of a perfect choir, with an entire absence (excepting in the capitals of the columns) of ornamental detail. Several of these capitals are like those which prevail in St. Etienne at Caen, and which appear in Remigius’s work at Lincoln; they are a dim reminiscence of the Corinthian capital, with a cross-formed block representing the rosette in the abacus; for, be it always remembered, that the abacus of a Corinthian capital was not the prototype of that of a Romanesque one, in which a substantial impost is superimposed upon the delicate abacus of the classic column. I give drawings from Caen (Fig. 248), from the Tower (Figs. 245, 246, 247), and from Lincoln (Fig. 249), to explain the identity and peculiar characteristics of these capitals. The common cushion capital is also freely used.

I will next go to St. Alban’s; not that I can distinctly assert it to be the next in date; but because it stood first in rank among abbeys, as Canterbury among cathedrals; because it was built by the friend and companion of Lanfranc; and because the crudeness of its material, by divesting it of all decorative features, renders it a more purely typical and elementary example than any other we possess.

Founded only ten years after the Dioclesian persecution, when St. Alban became the proto-martyr of Britain,—destroyed during the invasions of Pagan Saxons, and refounded as an abbey during the last years of the eighth century by Offa, king of Mercia,—the church of St. Alban had become famous throughout Christendom.

The two last Anglo-Saxon abbots having determined on its reconstruction, had incurred great labour in excavating among the ruins of the adjacent Roman city of Verulam to procure materials for the work; but a dreadful famine, followed by the Norman invasion, had prevented the realisation of their intentions.

In the year 1077 Paul, a monk of St. Stephen’s, at Caen, and a relative of Lanfranc, was appointed to the abbacy; and, during the first eleven years of his tenure of office, he had “constructed the entire church” “of the stones and tiles from the ancient city of Verulam.” I presume, however, that this statement of Matthew Paris must be taken with some abatement, as we do not find the dedication to have taken place till 1115.

The church thus erected, though homely in material and of simple workmanship, was stupendous in its scale and prodigiously massive in its construction.

It is curious that, while the Abbot of St. Stephen’s, when made Metropolitan of all England, was content to copy his abbey church for his metropolitan cathedral, a plain monk of the same monastery, when made head of the first English abbey, should go so far beyond his former church in the scale of his new one.

A glance at the two plans will show the extent of the difference (Figs. 250, 251). While at St. Stephen’s the nave (including the façade) has nine bays, that of St. Alban’s has thirteen; while each transept of the former church had two bays and one apsidal chapel, those of the latter had each three bays and two chapels; and, while the choir at Caen had only two bays besides the apse, that at St. Alban’s had four.

The western façade, too, differed in that while that at Caen had towers which closed in the ends of the aisles, those at St. Alban’s projected wholly beyond their side walls; thus increasing the width of the front by double that of the aisles. The effect of all these changes upon the dimensions of the buildings was that, while St. Stephen’s was only 300 feet long, St. Alban’s was 465; that while the transept of the former measured 140 feet in length, that at St. Alban’s was 210 feet; and that the widths of the two western façades were respectively 88 feet and 155 feet.[25]

The design, though of the most rigid and almost gaunt simplicity, was admirably proportioned; and, when compared with Norman churches of more kindly material, seems like the block model rather than the finished structure. The cause of this was the use, almost to the entire exclusion of finer material, of the Roman tiles from Verulam. With these, not only a great part of the mass of the walls, but the pillars, arches, windows, string-courses, and other parts usually formed of stone, are almost exclusively constructed.

One might fancy that a vast structure erected of such materials might have a very picturesque appearance, and that the rich and deep red of the brick, alternating with an equal quantity of coarse mortar in the joints, and interspersed with rough flint work, might give to the general colouring of the edifice a warmth of tone, and a richness of texture which, on a general view, might more than make up for its ascetic plainness. But, oh! tell it not in our Belgravian Gath; neither publish it in the streets of our Tyburnian Ascalon! These Norman builders, like too many of their descendants in our own day, had no such artistic notions, but rejoiced in encrusting the whole,—within and without,—with one uniform coating of the smoothest and whitest plaster! St. Alban’s, when viewed from the ruins of Old Verulam, must have looked like a sort of “Moel Wynn,”—a white mountain; or, like the creation of a spell of Merlin,—hewn out of a single block of marble (Fig. 252)! Our romantic old Mediævals were not proof against such fascinations, for we find

St. Wilfrid glorying in having washed the York Minster of his day “whiter than snow;” and at Peterborough, it was the boast of one of the abbots, that he had so skilfully whitewashed his cathedral, that it appeared as if cut out of a single stone! But let us take comfort. Abbot Paul had not sunk to so low a depth! He had an eye to the sister arts; and we find him recorded as having enriched with painting the vaulting of the apse behind the high altar. Nor did he stand alone in his taste for such decorations; for we find now that every part of the plain old plastered walls, pillars, arches, and vaulting has been so enriched at different periods, the western side of the great piers of the nave being richly painted with figures and subjects as the reredoses of the altars placed against them.

With such artistic relief as this, added to the stern and massive grandeur of its parts and the stupendous scale of the whole, and adding also the gorgeousness of the shrine of the Proto-martyr, and of the numerous altars and other objects which imparted beauty and solemnity, one may well imagine that the internal effect, notwithstanding the absence of architectural detail, was as noble as it must have been unique.

The roofs, internally, may be proved to have been masked by level ceilings, no doubt gorgeously painted like that which still remains over the contemporary church at Hildesheim in North Germany, or that but recently executed by Mr. Burges, aided by the charming art of Mr. Poynter, over the nave of Waltham Abbey. The present painted ceilings are, no doubt, the lineal successors of the Norman ones.

In the midst rose the stupendous piers and arches which sustained the tower, between which the open lantern soared high above the church, while beneath this lofty centre of the stupendous cross were ranged the stalls of the monastic choir.

I illustrate this wonderfully dignified and impressive structure by several drawings of the whole and of parts. It will be seen from this how simply and almost exclusively it trusts to the most elementary principles for its architectural effect. First, to its general grouping and proportions, which are a perfect model of a typical Norman church, bereft of its usual details; and, secondly, to the simple principle of divided orders, which I have before explained, but used in nearly all instances without the aid of decorative shafts or mouldings.

The proportions of the internal elevation are such that, if the entire height of the wall be divided into nine parts, four go to the main arcade, two to the triforium or gallery, and three to the clerestory (Fig. 253).

The arches of each are of three orders, and are, for the most part, without shafts; the section of the jamb and arch being the same, severed only by a simple impost. A broad pilaster buttress runs up the face of each pier from floor to ceiling.

In the transept, however, the triforium is differently designed, being subdivided into coupled arches, and supported by stone shafts. Many of these shafts are balusters (most likely of Offa’s church) made use of again, with the addition of a Norman capital and base, and sometimes eked out in length by the interposition of Roman tiles (Fig. 254). Like the balusters I have had the opportunity of examining at Dover and at Jarrow,[26] they bear evident marks of having been turned in a lathe.

The outer wall of the gallery storey has been removed, but of its former existence there is distinct evidence; the mark of the roof, as seen against the transepts, showing that the aisle walls have been lowered by some 8 or 9 feet. Only three bays of the aisles retain their vaulting, which is of the most typical form of groining. It is capable of almost certain proof that the roofs were throughout devoid of parapets. The transept fronts were divided up the middle by a wide pilaster buttress, and flanked by similar ones. Their windows, as nearly all others, are of the greatest simplicity; three recessed orders in jambs and arches alike, with imposts to the two outer ones: above the springing line, however, of the gables, were ranges of double windows divided by stone shafts. Each transept has a staircase in its western angle which runs up into an ornamental round turret, with four double windows in its upper stage, and was most likely crowned with a cone. These staircases led into the triforium passages and into the roof.

The tower has three stages above the ridges of the roofs. The lower one has plain windows lighting the lantern; the second has, on each side, two pairs of double windows; and the upper storey has two such windows of large scale. The tower is flanked with pilaster buttresses merging in the upper storey into round turrets.

I will next take Winchester Cathedral. York would have claimed precedence as a metropolitan church, but its Norman remains are so small in extent as to neutralise its claims. I may mention, however, that Professor Willis (whose marvellous perception of antiquarian evidence enables him to describe, almost with precision, buildings of which the common observer would conclude that no relic or evidence exists) has shown us that the Norman cathedral at York (begun soon after 1070), was a structure of prodigious magnitude, and exceeded in the width of its nave any church in England; measuring 50 feet from centre to centre of its piers.

Winchester may be said, in these early days, to have rivalled London as the capital of England; for it had been the capital of that Saxon kingdom which brought all the others into subjection, and whose kings became kings of England; while London—the capital only of Essex, a kingdom subordinate to Kent—owed its greatness simply to its river.

We have already seen that the cathedral, founded by Birinus in the seventh century, had been rebuilt by Athelwold and Elphege in the tenth century.

In 1079 it was again rebuilt by Bishop Walkelyn, a chaplain and relation of the Conqueror, and finished about 1093.

Walkelyn’s Cathedral exceeded in vastness even Abbot Paul’s stupendous work at St. Alban’s. Its nave was of eleven bays, besides two vast western towers. Its transepts each had four bays; its eastern arm four bays, besides the apse, which had a surrounding aisle, and was flanked by two small towers.

Its length, independently of an eastern chapel, was 485 feet; or, including this chapel, 530 feet. The length of its transept was 225 feet (it was double-aisled, that at St. Alban’s being unaisled), dimensions which exceed those of St. Alban’s, and leave those of Lanfranc’s metropolitan church far in the background. The width, too, of the nave and its aisles was greater than that of St. Alban’s.

The architecture of this vast temple was of stern simplicity, though, being carried out in stone, it was much more fully developed than that of St. Alban’s. It was, in fact, a full and typical development of the Early Norman, with every feature complete, though all in their plainest garb.

All which now remains of this date is the transepts and the crypt (Fig. 257) of the eastern arm, and they may be described as the text-book of Norman in its earlier form. The transepts, as before stated, were doubly aisled, and (as Canterbury, Ely, and at Caen) a gallery crossed the outer bay of each, supported on a massive round pillar, so as to render the upper aisle continuous.

The plan of the piers of the transept, which probably gives us also that of the rest of the church, is very perfect and typical (Fig. 256).