FIG. 102.—PLAN OF DURHAM CATHEDRAL.
GREAT BRITAIN. Previous to the Norman conquest (1066) there was in the British Isles little or no architecture worthy of mention. The few extant remains of Saxon and Celtic buildings reveal a singular poverty of ideas and want of technical skill. These scanty remains are mostly of towers (those in Ireland nearly all round and tapering, with conical tops, their use and date being the subjects of much controversy) and crypts. The tower of Earl’s Barton is the most important and best preserved of those in England. With the Norman conquest, however, began an extraordinary activity in the building of churches and abbeys. William the Conqueror himself founded a number of these, and his Norman ecclesiastics endeavored to surpass on British soil the contemporary churches of Normandy. The new churches differed somewhat from their French prototypes; they were narrower and lower, but much longer, especially as to the choir and transepts. The cathedrals of Durham (1096–1133) and Norwich (same date) are important examples (Fig. 102). They also differed from the French churches in two important particulars externally; a huge tower rose usually over the crossing, and the western portals were small and insignificant. Lateral entrances near the west end were given greater importance and called Galilees. At Durham a Galilee chapel (not shown in the plan), takes the place of a porch at the west end, like the ante-churches of St. Benoît-sur-Loire and Vézelay.
THE NORMAN STYLE. The Anglo-Norman builders employed the same general features as the Romanesque builders of Normandy, but with more of picturesqueness and less of refinement and technical elegance. Heavy walls, recessed arches, round mouldings, cubic cushion-caps, clustered piers, and in doorways a jamb-shaft for each stepping of the arch were common to both styles. But in England the Corinthian form of capital is rare, its place being taken by simpler forms.
FIG. 103.—ONE BAY OF TRANSEPT, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL.
NORMAN INTERIORS. The interior design of the larger churches of this period shows a close general analogy to contemporaneous French Norman churches, as appears by comparing the nave of Waltham or Peterboro’ with that of Cérisy-la-Forêt, in Normandy. Although the massiveness of the Anglo-Norman piers and walls plainly suggests the intention of vaulting the nave, this intention seems never to have been carried out except in small churches and crypts. All the existing abbeys and cathedrals of this period had wooden ceilings or were, like Durham, Norwich, and Gloucester, vaulted at a later date. Completed as they were with wooden nave-roofs, the clearstory was, without danger, made quite lofty and furnished with windows of considerable size. These were placed near the outside of the thick wall, and a passage was left between them and a triple arch on the inner face of the wall—a device imitated from the abbeys at Caen. The vaulted side-aisles were low, with disproportionately wide pier-arches, above which was a high triforium gallery under the side-roofs. Thus a nearly equal height was assigned to each of the three stories of the bay, disregarding that subordination of minor to major parts which gives interest to an architectural composition. The piers were quite often round, as at Gloucester, Hereford, and Bristol. Sometimes round piers alternated with clustered piers, as at Durham and Waltham; and in some cases clustered piers alone were employed, as at Peterboro’ and in the transepts of Winchester (Fig. 103).
FIG. 104.—FRONT OF IFFLEY CHURCH.