The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church

by A. Hamilton Thompson

Fig. 4. St Peter's, Barton-on-Humber: from S.W.

§ 21. In these buildings we seem to discover the influence of the centralised plan, acting through the channel of German art. It would be absurd to say that the plan of Barton-on-Humber was inspired by the plan of the palace-church at Aachen, which was an adaptation, with some improvement, of the plan of San Vitale at Ravenna. No masterly intellectual effort, such as the Aachen plan shows, was necessary to plan a rectangle with two smaller rectangles at either end. But the church at Aachen had made the centralised plan familiar to the builders of western Europe. In Germany and in France there are traces of its influence; and we may reasonably suppose that the builders of Barton-on-Humber were acquainted with the existence of an alternative to the usual plan of the church with a longitudinal axis, and did not arrive by haphazard at their concentration of the plan upon a central point. One earlier example of the centralised plan is known to have existed in England. In addition to his basilica at Hexham, Wilfrid had built another church there in the shape of a Greek cross. The description of it which we possess shows that the central space was the actual church, that it was tower-like in form, and nearly circular in shape, and that the arms were simply porch-like projections. Probably it was a combination of baptistery with tomb-church. It is not likely that the simple plan of Barton was derived from that at Hexham. Both were probably the result of continental influence; but, while the church at Hexham may have been the work of Gallo-Roman masons in direct communication with the general current of architectural progress, the church at Barton was probably built by Englishmen, who adapted the centralised plan to methods natural to their comparative want of skill.

§ 22. Neither at this time nor later did the centralised plan in England develop along the lines suggested by Barton-on-Humber. No real development on such lines was possible. In Germany, the achievement at Aachen made possible the polygonal nave of St Gereon at Cologne and the centralised plan of the Liebfrauenkirche at Trier, as well as many twelfth and thirteenth century churches whose complicated parts are planned and massed together with relation to a central tower space. In England, however, the habit of dealing with circular or polygonal forms made little progress; and our few "round churches," the plan of the naves of which was a devout imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and our polygonal chapter houses, are almost all that we have to show in the way of attempts at a definitely centralised plan. Our church plan develops as the result of an effort to combine a series of rectangles effectively; and, while this combination can be attempted in several different ways, it is obvious that the rigid lines of the rectangle do not admit of that free scope in centralised planning which is given by the circle or polygon.

§ 23. We have seen, however, that, even in the earliest days, there was a tendency to admit additions to the simple longitudinal plan, which, in process of time, were bound to give birth, if not to a definitely centralised plan, to something, at any rate, in which a central point counted for much. A feature of the early cathedral and of St Pancras at Canterbury, was the projection of porticus, porches or side chapels, from the nave. These were entered by archways pierced in the centre of the lateral walls. In the cathedral they had outer doorways, and formed the main entrances of the church, on the north from the monastery, on the south from the city. The south porch contained the altar of St Gregory, and, as Eadmer tells us, was used as a court of justice to which litigants, in process of time, resorted from every part of England. In the north porch, dedicated to St Martin, was held the school of the monastery. Upon both porches towers were built at a date which cannot be ascertained, but was probably later than the time of Augustine. Of the use of the porches at St Pancras, which did not contain outer doorways, it is impossible to say anything definitely. Entrance porches, of which one remains, projected from the sides of the church at Bradford-on-Avon: the outer and inner doorways of the north porch are extremely narrow, and are placed west of the centre of its north and south walls. It is possible, therefore, that there was an altar in this porch, so that it served the double purpose of entrance porch and side chapel.

§ 24. As time went on, the western porch beneath the tower was disused as a public entrance. The principal entrance of most churches is on the south side, west of the centre of the aisle wall, and is usually covered by a porch. There is a Saxon [example] of this at Bishopstone in Sussex, where, as at Bradford, room seems to have been left for an altar on the east side. However, the main entrance of the ordinary Saxon church was at the west end, through the ground floor of the tower. The porch in the lateral wall seems to have been regarded primarily as a side chapel; and in some later Saxon churches the porches were dissociated from lateral doorways, and were planned as closed projections from the eastern part of the north and south walls of the nave. This seems to have happened at Britford, near Salisbury, where archways remain on both sides near the east end of the nave. At Deerhurst square projections were entered from both sides of the nave, immediately west of the chancel arch; and it is probable that there were somewhat similar projections at Repton. At Worth in Sussex, where the north and south doorways of the nave are Saxon, and there is no western entrance or original tower, there are large Saxon chapels projecting from the eastern part of the nave, and entered by wide arches. The cruciform plan is sufficiently marked in the conjectural restorations of Deerhurst and Repton. At Worth it is quite unmistakable.

§ 25. At Worth, however, in spite of the dignity of the lateral arches, the chapels are still porch-like excrescences, larger in scale than usual, but lower in elevation than the nave. In elevation their transept-like appearance is less noticeable than on plan. Moreover, the length of the nave remains unbroken from west wall to chancel arch: no central space is marked off to which these transeptal projections give emphasis. Nevertheless, a suggestion of an intermediate space between nave and chancel is given; and this space is definitely marked in the plans of churches which may be quite as early in date as Worth—i.e. about the first half of the eleventh century—by the admission of a tower between nave and chancel. The eastern part of the walls of the nave at St Mary's in Dover Castle are continued upwards as a tower, with small rectangular chapels projecting from the sides of the ground floor. Externally, no division between the tower and nave is noticeable; but, inside the church, in addition to the chancel arch and the arches into the chapels, a fourth arch is pierced in the western wall of the tower, and so an intermediate space between tower and nave is effectually created. At Breamore in Hants, a further step is taken. The tower space, between nave and chancel, is of the same width as the nave; but, in addition to the necessary internal division, an external division is also marked by the quoins of the tower, which are complete to the ground. Only one chapel remains at Breamore, on the south of the tower, entered by a narrow Saxon archway; but there was originally another on the north.

§ 26. The chapels which project from these early "central" towers are, it is to be noted, not true transepts. They are narrower than the tower, which is built up from the ground, and not upon a system of piers and arches which require lateral abutments in the form of transepts. The western tower is transferred, as it were, to a point near the centre of the church, assumes the width of the nave, and is provided with transeptal excrescences, to communicate with which its side walls are pierced. Such excrescences are not necessary. At Stanton Lacy, in Shropshire, there is only one. At Dunham Magna, in Norfolk, and other places, such as Waith in Lincolnshire, there are, or were originally, none at all. The construction of the "central" tower upon piers connected by arches was beyond the skill of the ordinary Saxon builder; and its natural consequence, the development of the full cruciform plan, with transepts of the height and width of nave and chancel, was thus out of his reach. We know, from contemporary evidence, that one important abbey church, that of Ramsey, had a central tower which was built upon piers and arches as early as 974 A.D.; and perhaps this was the case in other large churches. But, even in the large church of Stow in Lincolnshire, which is commonly taken on trust, without sufficient historical evidence, as the cathedral church of the Saxon diocese of Lindsey, although an advance in transeptal construction was made, the main principle was imperfectly grasped. This church was made the home of a community of clergy about the beginning of the reign of Edward the Confessor, by Leofric, earl of Mercia, and his wife Godiva. It was restored after the Conquest by Rémi, the first Norman bishop of Lincoln. The aisleless nave and chancel are Norman work of two periods: probably the nave was rebuilt upon Saxon foundations. The transepts, however, of considerable length and equal height with nave and chancel, were retained from the pre-Conquest building. The tall jambs of the arches of the central tower also remain on all four sides. The arches which they bear are of early Norman character; and the present tower is a late Gothic structure, the arches and piers of which are built up on the inner side of the older masonry. But the Saxon tower space, including the area of the arch-jambs, is rather wider than the arms of the cross which project from it. The tower formed a separate building, with quoins complete from the ground, and nave, chancel, and transepts, instead of combining to support it, were mere excrescences from it, entered by arches in its walls. Possibly the example of Barton-on-Humber may have had to do with this treatment of the tower as a separate central pavilion, which may have been deliberately preferred to the arch and pier treatment. In other respects the plan is an advance upon the plans of Dover and Breamore. And the necessary advance upon Stow is found in the church of Norton-on-Tees in south Durham. Here the tower, between nave and chancel, rests on piers connected by arches. The arches have been widened; two have been entirely rebuilt at a later date; and the rest of the church has been subjected at different times to enlargement and rebuilding. In spite of this, we have at Norton our earliest surviving example of a plan in which the various portions of the church—nave, chancel, and transepts—are gathered together in one structural connexion. The tower is to the east of the centre of the longitudinal axis of the church; but structurally, it is the central point with regard to which the building is planned, and the unity of the composition depends upon it.