The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church

by A. Hamilton Thompson

I. Nave, Tower, and Porches

§ 39. The variations of the aisleless plan, which have been indicated, are all of which it is capable. Naturally, after the twelfth century, many aisleless churches were still built, and are common in country districts. In their humblest form we find them in the small churches of highland regions, the masonry of which is so rough that their date is often a matter of doubt. Sometimes they have been rebuilt, with a lengthened chancel, as at West Heslerton, near Scarborough. In many instances, we have aisleless country churches rebuilt in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with western towers. This, uncommon in no part of England, is especially common in Norfolk and Suffolk; and some of these churches, like Ranworth in Norfolk, have much dignity and spaciousness of proportion. In some late Gothic churches the structural division between nave and chancel is left out, and the building has been deliberately planned as a spacious aisleless rectangle, of which the eastern bay is allotted to the chancel. This happens at Temple Balsall in Warwickshire and the chapel of South Skirlaugh in Yorkshire. Aisleless plans with one or two transeptal chapels are to be found all through the middle ages: Acton Burnell represents a thoroughly symmetrical employment of this type. On the other hand, aisleless cruciform plans with central towers are by no means common after the twelfth century. Potterne is a perfect development of this plan in the thirteenth century. There is a complete aisleless cruciform plan at Othery, near Bridgwater, where the tall central tower is quite out of proportion to the humble church above which it rises, and has necessitated substantial outer buttressing. Here probably the church was rebuilt on earlier foundations, transepts being possibly added. In many instances an aisleless cruciform church seems to have been rebuilt on the lines of a complete Norman plan. This was with little doubt the case at Acaster Malbis, near York, where the church is planned with direct relation to the central space, but without a tower; and the foundations of earlier walls can be traced all round the building, at the foot of the walls built in the fourteenth century. The absence of the tower is an anomaly, but is one method of solving the problem of the connexion between nave and chancel in the cruciform plan.

§ 40. Thus, if here and there we can detect novelties which make for improvements upon the aisleless plan, the plan itself is subject to no general development upon its own unelastic lines. The real course of development is to be traced in the gradual addition of aisles to the church. Just as the basilica may have come into existence by the addition of aisles to an aisleless building, so the parish church was enlarged by the piercing of its walls for columns and arches, and the incorporation of aisles with the main building. The usefulness of aisles is at once apparent. They afford greater space for the distribution of the congregation. The aisleless church may be inconveniently crowded from wall to wall: on the other hand, where spaces are left between the nave and side walls, the congregation will mass itself in the nave, but the aisles will be left free until the nave is filled, and thus there will be free access through the side doorways for as long a time as possible. Aisles also afford a clear space for processions, and allow them to turn inside the church at a certain point and without difficulty. In addition to this, aisles form a convenient situation for the smaller altars of a church, and, from an early date, were added with this view.

§ 41. A parish church usually contained more than one altar, even if served by a single priest. In the small aisleless church of Patricio in Breconshire, in addition to the altar in the chancel, there were two smaller altars, which still remain in place, on either side of the central doorway of the rood screen. Such altars were dedicated in honour of various saints; and mass would be said at them on the festivals of those saints and on other occasions. The various popular devotions which came into being in the middle ages, led to the multiplication of special altars and chapels. In cathedral and abbey churches, where there were many priests, the provision of a number of altars was, from the first, a necessity. To this is due the adoption, from the beginning, of the aisled plan in our larger churches, where it is a direct inheritance from the basilican plan. At Norwich and at Gloucester, for instance, the apse was provided with an encircling aisle, which gave access to small apsidal chapels. The transepts also had eastern chapels ending in apses. At Durham each transept had an eastern aisle, containing a row of such chapels; and the abnormal development of the transepts in thirteenth century churches, as at York, Lincoln, and Salisbury, and the occasional provision of an eastern transept, or of a great transverse eastern arm, like the Nine Altars at Fountains and Durham, was made with a view to the continually growing number of altars and daily masses. In Cistercian abbeys, the churches of which were wholly devoted to the uses of the monastery, the aisles of the nave were divided into chapels by transverse walls. In the secular cathedral of Chichester, where the aisles had to be left free, outer aisles, similarly divided, were made. Great French cathedrals, like Amiens, not only have a complicated series of chapels opening from the aisles of the apse, but have their naves lined with chapels, which were formed by removing the outer walls of the aisles to a level with the outer face of the buttresses. The ordinary parish church had no need of these elaborate arrangements, although in towns and in districts where money was plentiful and its possessors recognised its true source, plans hardly less spacious than those of the cathedral and monastery churches came into being. But it is obvious that, in a church where there were no more than two or three altars, space would be gained by removing them from the body of the church to the end of the aisles. In some twelfth century churches there were probably altars against the wall on either side of the narrow chancel arch; and, in later days, as at Ranworth and Patricio, when the rood screen filled the lower part of a broad arch, altars were placed against the screen. In the first case, the chancel arch might have been widened; in the second case, the sides of the screen would have been freed, by the addition of aisles into which the altars could have been removed.

§ 42. The most common plan of the aisled church is formed by an aisled nave with a long aisleless chancel, western tower, and south porch. So common is this that it may be spoken of as the normal plan of the larger English parish church. There must have been, we already have said, a very large number of aisleless churches in England at the time of the Conquest. Where Norman builders reconstructed parish churches, they showed a distinct preference for the aisleless plan. But, in many churches, built about or soon after the beginning of the twelfth century, aisles were planned and executed. The walls of earlier churches were entirely taken down, and new arcades built in their place, not necessarily on the precise line of the old foundations. Aisled twelfth century naves on a magnificent scale may be seen, for example, at Melbourne in Derbyshire, and Sherburn-in-Elmet, between York and Leeds. Both places were important episcopal residences: Melbourne belonged to the bishops of Carlisle; the manor of Sherburn was the head of a barony of the archbishops of York, who, all through the middle ages, did much to promote architecture on their domains. Another twelfth century nave of great magnificence is that of Norham-on-Tweed, which belonged to the cathedral priory of Durham; and, although we must not assume that it was built at the expense of the monastery, it doubtless owes its stately proportions to the influence of the mother house. Less imposing in elevation, but richer in refined detail, are such aisled naves as those of Long Sutton in south Lincolnshire, and Walsoken in west Norfolk, which belong to the later part of the twelfth century. The plans in each case are very regular; and the new arcades were probably built, at any rate in part, on older foundations. These naves reach the extent, unusual in a parish church, of seven bays. The nave of Norham is of five bays. Melbourne has five bays, but the plan of the church was as exceptional at the west as at the east end. Western towers were planned, but not completed, at the end of either aisle: this feature, probably imitated from Southwell minster, was also contemplated at Bakewell in Derbyshire. Between the towers was an extra western bay of the nave, divided into two stories, the lower forming a vaulted return aisle, the upper forming a gallery. There are only four bays at Sherburn, but here the aisles were continued as far as the western face of the tower. The tower is thus engaged within the aisles, and its vaulted ground floor forms, like the western bay at Melbourne, a return to them.

§ 43. But, when the question of adding aisles to a church arose, the builders were met by the difficulty that the church was wanted constantly for service. The taking down of the walls and the building of new arcades interfered with this necessary use of the fabric. In our own day a congregation, driven out by builders or restorers, can resort to a school room or mission room. In the middle ages, these alternatives were unknown; and the church was positively indispensable. With this in view, the builders were obliged to add their aisles without touching more of the main fabric than they could help. Usually, then, they took the length of the existing aisleless building for the length of their aisles. They then set out the aisles upon either side of the church, building the outer walls, and dividing them into bays by external buttresses. Then, opposite each buttress, they proceeded to break through the walls of the church. Leaving a piece of the old wall to serve as a footing for each column, they built up the columns in the thickness of the wall, the masonry being gradually removed as each rose in height. The arches were made in the same way, the wall being removed by degrees until the two sides of each arch met at the key-stone. The aisles were then roofed, and, finally, the masses of wall which still remained beneath each arch were broken down, and the nave and aisles thrown into one. The old masonry could be removed through the doorways of the aisles; and sometimes one of the end walls of either aisle was left unbuilt to the last, so that the masons could have free entrance for new, and exit for old, material. The old walls of the nave, above the columns and arches, were left untouched. In this way the upper parts of the walls of several Saxon naves—more, probably, than we have opportunity of discovering—remain to us. The north wall at Geddington in Northamptonshire is the most striking instance. The practice was so common as to be general. In hundreds of country churches the plinths on which the columns of the nave rest are probably pieces of the foundation of the older wall, refaced, or even left in the rough. Instances are nearly as common in which the heads of the new arches have blocked earlier windows; for, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when glass was rare and expensive, and the openings were usually closed by latticed shutters, the windows were set high in the wall. There is a remarkable example of the retention of old work at Seamer, near Scarborough. To this fine twelfth century aisleless church a north aisle was added in the fifteenth century. The builders, possibly wishing to avoid expense, employed the old method, which in those days of prosperity and general rebuilding had fallen into disuse. In order not to interfere with the older windows, they deliberately made their arches very low: the result is that, from the interior of the aisle, one can see that the old wall was almost entirely kept, the new columns being built up on the line of the flat pilaster buttresses, which were left unaltered above the capitals. Sometimes, the connexion between nave and aisles was made by cutting arches at intervals in the wall, without building columns. The north arcade at Billingham in Durham, and the thirteenth century arcades at Tytherington in Gloucestershire consist of arches with large masses of the earlier wall left between them. Such a method was economical, as much less dressed stone was required; and we find it employed at Copford in Essex, where good building stone was hard to get. Nevertheless, it prevented the free circulation of light from the windows of the aisles, and practically shut off the aisles from the church.

Fig. 9. Gretton, Northants: arcade of nave showing blocked window head.

§ 44. There is one obvious consequence of the setting out of aisles on either side of an existing building which, although an imperfection in itself, contributes greatly to the variety of the parish church plan. The builders cannot see both their aisles at one and the same time: the older church comes in between. In fact, until the nave and aisles are actually joined, at the close of the work, by the breaking down of the walls beneath the arches, there can be no opportunity of appreciating the full effect of the work. There is a famous instance at Beverley minster of the mistakes to which the presence of the older building may lead. The aisles of the nave were set out in the fourteenth century on either side of an older and shorter nave. The south aisle was set out first, the width of the eastern bay being measured from a new buttress in the angle of nave and transept. On the north side there was a thirteenth century buttress in this position: the builders, in setting out their north aisle, overlooked the fact that this buttress was of less projection than the newly built one on the other side, with the result that their buttress measurements throughout varied on both sides, while the standard of width between the buttresses, which had been employed on the south side, was retained. Consequently, as the columns, in a vaulted church, have to be built in line with the buttresses of the corresponding aisle walls, the columns were not opposite one another, and the discrepancy increased as the church advanced westward. When the builders got clear of the intervening building, in the western bays of the nave, they were able to rectify their mistake slightly; but the effect is unpleasantly noticeable in the obliquity of the transverse arches of the vaulting.

§ 45. If errors like this could take place in churches where the width of the bays of the aisles was calculated, they were much more likely to take place where builders worked with less accurate ideas of measurement. In an unvaulted church, where the pressure of the roof is not a serious factor in the construction, the exact correspondence of pier to buttress need not be taken into account; and there are many churches in which the spacing of the aisles is quite independent of that of the arcades. This happens at Melbourne, where the church was not planned for stone vaulting. The builders seem to have thought that they could get in six bays between the transept and the space planned for one of the western towers; but found that, on the measurements they had adopted, there was room only for five. They corrected their miscalculation by broadening the division of the wall between the fourth and fifth bay of the aisles. When they came to build the arcades, they were conscious of their previous error, and planned them in five equal bays irrespective of the plan of the aisles. In churches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially in districts like Norfolk or south Lincolnshire, where much rebuilding was done, the regularity of plan is often remarkable. The nave of the famous church of Heckington, near Sleaford, was planned with an exact correspondence between aisles and arcades: pier is opposite buttress, window opposite window. Islip and Brampton Ash in Northamptonshire show an equal accuracy. But, while such agreement is desirable, it is neither necessary nor general. And, where the arcades are broken through earlier walls, the correspondence is seldom very precise. The central line of the east walls of the aisles, as set out first, will usually correspond to a line drawn across the centre of the chancel arch: similarly, the line of the west walls will be an extension of the west wall of the nave, or of a line drawn across the tower arch. The aisles will be spaced into as many equal, or nearly equal bays, as can be got in between the buttresses at either end. When, however, the building of the arcade is taken in hand, the responds or half-piers at either end will seldom be built directly against the piers of the chancel arch, or against the west wall of the nave; but projecting pieces of the old walls will be left as a backing to them. It follows that, although the arcade may be divided into the same number of bays as the aisles, the standard of spacing will be different, and consequently, unless a very regular system of planning is adopted, the piers will not be exactly opposite the solid portions of the aisle walls, and consequently the centres of the arches will be out of line with the centres of the windows. Again, it may be that, by accident or design, the backing for the responds may project more on one side of the nave than on the other, at either or both ends. The result will be that the piers of one arcade will be out of line with those of the arcade opposite. That discrepancies of this kind were sometimes the result of intention cannot be denied; but there is generally some practical reason to be found for the intention, and the discrepancies themselves were a pis aller which the builders would have avoided, if they could. That deliberate irregularity with which medieval masons are sometimes credited is a fancy, which careful consideration of the circumstances will dispel.