The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church

by A. Hamilton Thompson

§ 67. Sometimes a new chancel encroached upon the nave. This happened at Skipwith in Yorkshire, where the church underwent some alteration about the middle of the fourteenth century. The new chancel was made of the same width as the nave; and apparently the old chancel arch was entirely removed, and its site, with the part of the nave immediately west of it, made into an extra bay of the chancel. No new chancel arch was built. One of the most curious and perplexing instances, in which additional westward room has been given to the chancel, and there is no structural division between chancel and nave, is at Tansor in Northants. The perplexity which arises here is due to the plentiful re-use of old work by the builders, the presence of which in unexpected places makes the history of the building a nearly insoluble puzzle. The church reached its present length about 1140, when probably the Saxon nave was left as the west part of a church, which was now of the same width the whole way through, and had no chancel arch. Some forty years later, narrow aisles of three bays were added to the nave; and, about the same time, a transeptal chapel may have been thrown out from the south wall, immediately east of the south aisle. As the church stands on southward sloping ground, there seems to have been no room for another chapel on the north side. In the thirteenth century, the aisles were lengthened eastwards, to flank the western part of the chancel. The builders moved back the eastern responds of the old arcades to the points from which the lengthened arcades were to start. They set themselves, however, a difficult problem when they reserved a space at the end of the north aisle for a sacristy, and set the respond on the west side of this narrow bay. Their north aisle thus consisted of five bays and a very narrow eastern bay for the sacristy. On the south side no space corresponding to the sacristy was marked out, although the eastern respond was placed in a line with the east side of the opening of the sacristy. The number of bays on the south side had to be five, as there was no room for six. The result is that the pillars of the arcades, with the exception of those of the two bays furthest west, which were left unaltered, are not opposite each other. In the meantime, the old transeptal chapel was left standing between a south aisle and a short south chapel of the chancel. About 1300, the aisle and chapel seem to have been widened to the full length of the transeptal chapel, and thus a broad south aisle was formed. In this plan, the chancel proper projects for some distance east of the aisles; but, for ritual purposes, the eastern part of the nave, corresponding to the eastern bay of the north aisle and the sacristy bay beyond, forms, and has formed since the twelfth century, a western extension of the chancel.

§ 68. The addition of aisles to chancels was an even more gradual process than the addition of aisles to naves; and, as a rule, the aisles were at first mere chapels. Chancel aisles or chapels of twelfth century date are not very common in smaller churches. But a plan like that at Melbourne, where the apsidal chapels east of the transepts flank the chancel very closely, leads naturally to the provision of chapels communicating directly with the chancel. The logical consequence of such a plan is seen at Oundle, at the close of the twelfth century, where rectangular chapels were built along the north and south walls of the western part of the chancel. The walls were pierced with broad, low arches, and arches were built between the chapels and the transepts. The chapels, in this instance, are at the back of the quire stalls; and a long projecting piece of aisleless chancel was left beyond them, to which, in the fifteenth century, a large northern vestry was added. This plan, where both chancel chapels were added at much the same time and on the same scale, is symmetrical. But, as a rule, chancel chapels were built just when they were needed. At Arksey, near Doncaster, where, as at St Mary's, Shrewsbury, the walls of late twelfth century transepts have been largely preserved inside the church in spite of many alterations, the chancel is a long aisleless twelfth century building east of a central tower. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the north chancel wall was pierced, and a narrow chapel built, which was one bay shorter than the chancel itself. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the nave was enlarged, and the south aisle was widened to the full length of the south transept. A south chapel was added to the chancel: its outer wall was continued from the south wall of the transept, and carried eastwards for a little distance beyond the east wall of the chancel. Thus chancel, south chapel, and north chapel, are all of three different lengths and breadths, the south chapel being the longest and widest. When the south chapel was built, a considerable portion of the old chancel wall was left untouched on its north side. It is obvious that the methods of building employed in such additions were those which have been described in connexion with the addition of aisles to a nave. It is no uncommon thing to enter, as at Tamworth, a chancel aisle or chantry chapel, and find substantial remains of the old outer wall of the chancel, which has been pierced with one or more arches of communication.

§ 69. As the relative dates and proportions of chancel chapels vary so greatly, it is obvious that in many cases only one will be found. We frequently meet with churches which have only one aisle to the nave; but these are for the most part small buildings, and one aisle usually, in larger buildings, presupposes another, although symmetry of proportion need not be expected. However, many important churches have one chancel chapel, and no more. Raunds in Northamptonshire, and Leverington in Cambridgeshire, have south, but not north, chapels. Stanion in Northamptonshire, and Hullavington in Wiltshire, have north, but not south chapels. In both these last cases, the chapels are simply continuations of the aisles, without a break or intermediate arch; and the chapel at Stanion is neither more nor less than a second chancel. As the dedication of Stanion church is to St Peter and St Paul, it is not unlikely that the prominence given to the north chapel may be due to the provision of altars for both saints. The same consideration may have influenced the building of the church at Wisbech, which is also dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. Here, the twelfth century chancel had a south chapel; but when, at the end of the thirteenth century, the chancel was lengthened, the south chapel was also enlarged into what is practically a second chancel. Not only this, but the south aisle of the church was rebuilt on the scale of a second nave, a second south aisle was built out beyond it, and the whole church, which afterwards was enlarged towards the north and otherwise altered, was more than doubled in size.

§ 70. Where chantry chapels are attached to one side or other of a chancel, their variations in size and plan are almost infinite. In the smallest examples, they are mere projections from the wall of the chancel, and little more than tomb recesses, such as the Cresacre chapel at Barnburgh, near Rotherham, or the Booth chapel on the south side of the chancel at Sawley in Derbyshire. The little north chapel of the chancel at Clapton-in-Gordano in Somerset may have served as a vestry. At Brancepeth, near Durham, where there is a long chancel and an aisled nave with transeptal chapels, a south chantry chapel adjoins the east side of the south transeptal chapel, while a north chantry chapel forms an independent excrescence from the north wall, and is shut off from the chancel by a doorway. Brigstock in Northamptonshire has a very large north chancel chapel, which is virtually the eastern portion of a widened aisle: the south chapel, on the other hand, is of much later date, and is so small that there must have been room in it for an altar and little more. These smaller chantry chapels, like the beautiful south chapel at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northants, have often great architectural beauty of their own, and give great variety to the plan of the church. But chancel chapels are often larger and more important, like the fourteenth century south chapel at Leverton, near Boston, which is practically a separate building, separated from the chancel by a wall without an arcade, or like the very spacious north chapel of the priory church at Brecon. The south chapel of the chancel at Berkeley in Gloucestershire, and the Clopton chapel at Long Melford in Suffolk, are shut off from the adjacent parts of the church, and belong to that class of chantry chapel of which our cathedrals furnish many examples. In this case, the chapel is a small separate building, attached to the fabric of the church, but hardly forming an integral part of it.

§ 71. One very important consequence of the addition of aisles and chantry chapels to chancels, at any rate on a large scale, is seen where they are applied to plans originally cruciform. We have already seen that at St Mary's, Shrewsbury, and at Arksey, although much of the fabric of the old transepts was left, broad chancel chapels tended to obliterate the cruciform character of the building. The transepts at Spalding almost escape notice, owing to the double aisle on the south side of the nave, the aisle and north chapel on the opposite side, and the large chapel east of the south transept. Moreover, when, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, aisles were rebuilt or widened, there was always, as at Tansor, a tendency to decide the width of the aisle by the length of an existing transept or transeptal chapel, and to build the new outer wall flush with its gable wall. In this case, the aisle would be planned to communicate with the transept, and the west wall of the transept would have to be cut through. Where, as at Arksey, there was a central tower, the old transept was structurally necessary, and only as much of its masonry would be removed as was absolutely necessary. But we have seen that there were cases in which it was thought advisable to take down the central tower altogether, and build a new one at the west end, in which case the transepts were of no structural use; and there were far more cases in which the transeptal excrescences were merely projecting chapels. In these instances, the transept was felt to intervene awkwardly between the aisles of nave and chancel. Accordingly, its side walls and gabled roof were taken down, its end wall was remodelled, and it was placed under one roof with the adjacent aisles, in which it became merged. The cruciform plan was thus lost in certain churches, becoming absorbed in the ordinary elongated plan, with aisles to nave and chancel. Tamworth church in Staffordshire, and Marshfield in Gloucestershire, had twelfth century central towers. These were removed or destroyed, at Tamworth in the fourteenth, at Marshfield in the fifteenth century, and the aisles and chancel chapels were widened to the original length, approximately, of the transepts. The north and south arches of the crossing, however, remain in a blocked condition, and tell the tale of what has happened. Wakefield cathedral is another instance of a large parish church whose aisleless cruciform plan has gradually disappeared within the aisles, until the plan is—or was till the additions of a few years ago—an aisled rectangle, the origin of which is certainly not obvious at first sight. The transformations here described must clearly be understood not to apply to cruciform churches generally, but merely to churches which, with an originally cruciform plan, needed enlargement. Many handsome late Gothic buildings, like the churches of Rotherham and Chesterfield, or St Mary's at Nottingham, are regular cruciform churches with central towers; and sometimes, as at Newark, transeptal chapels were the latest of all additions to a church. But, where the transeptal chapel cramped necessary space, it had to disappear. At St Margaret's, Leicester, the arches into the transeptal chapels remain; but the chapels themselves have entirely disappeared, and the arches merely form part of the arcade between the nave and its broad aisles.

§ 72. The aim of restorers and rebuilders from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards was to convert the church into a rectangle with aisles. As we have seen, the chancel was constantly, in late Gothic churches, an aisleless projection from the main fabric; but, where it was aisled, the old haphazard methods were often abandoned, and the aisles were made of approximately equal size. The old distinction between nave and chancel, marked by the chancel arch, and the arches between chapels and aisles, begin to vanish. Where the chancel arch was kept, as at Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, new chancel chapels were prolonged westward on each side of the nave, in place of the old nave aisles. Fairford church in Gloucestershire was rebuilt towards the end of the fifteenth century, to contain the splendid stained glass which had just been acquired for it. A central tower was built on strong piers, as a concession to the old plan; but the aisles of the nave were continued on either side of the tower and along the sides of the chancel till within a bay of the east end. But, in a great many churches, not merely the aisles, but the nave and chancel also became continuous, without a structural division. This feature, common in East Anglia and the south-west of England, was the result of the importance of carved and painted wood-work in late Gothic churches. The rood screen, stretching across nave and aisles, appeared to full advantage, when unbroken by the chancel arch. The splendid timber roofs of nave and aisles gained in effect, if they formed, as at Southwold, or in the churches of Norwich, an unbroken covering to the church from end to end. In Norfolk and Suffolk, where the work of rebuilding began in the fourteenth century, as at Cawston, Worstead, or Tunstead, the chancel arch was often kept. At Worstead and other Norfolk churches the method pursued by the builders was precisely opposite to that which we have seen employed by Gloucestershire masons at Cirencester and other places, and may see in most of the fifteenth century churches of Somerset. The arcades were rebuilt first, and the aisles followed. Many of these churches were doubtless enlarged from much smaller buildings. The south aisle at Ingham was probably the nave of the earlier church, to which the present nave, north aisle, chancel, and west tower, were added. The aisles in most cases continued at a uniform width eastward as chancel chapels. The north aisle at Worstead was continued by a two-storied sacristy to the level of the east wall of the chancel. The south aisle stops at a bay short of the east wall, leaving the end of the chancel projecting as an altar space. Whether the chancel arch was retained or not, the projection of this aisleless eastern bay became a very general feature of the larger churches of East Anglia, and, in churches like Trunch, Southwold, and Clare, its tall side windows flood the space with light The most striking example of this plan is at Long Melford in Suffolk, where there is no chancel arch, and the actual chancel projects beyond the aisles. Here, however, it is flanked on the north by the Clopton chapel, and on the south by the vestry, which forms a covered way to the detached lady chapel further east. The Long Melford plan, with a projecting altar space, and without a chancel arch, is nearly universal in Cornwall, and is common in south Devon, where, as at Totnes, the aisles of the chancel are usually little more than comparatively short chapels, and sometimes, as at West Alvington, near Kingsbridge, extend only a bay beyond the screen. Its great advantages, apart from the display of wood-work which it permits, are the gain of internal space permitted by the reduction of the solid portions of the building to a minimum, the additional light admitted by the same means, and the long uninterrupted clerestory which forms a wall of glass, with thin stone divisions, on each side of the upper part of the church.

§ 73. The tendency to give the whole church aisles of equal width throughout, and extending along its whole length, was irresistible, especially in East Anglia. The church of North Walsham, rebuilt towards the end of the fourteenth century, is a great rectangle of three parallel divisions, with axes from east to west, and of nearly equal breadth. The chapel of St Nicholas at Lynn, rebuilt in 1419, is an even more striking example of the same design: in both cases the simple and somewhat monotonous plan is varied by the projection of a handsome south porch. At Lynn, the thirteenth century west tower, with a spire, was kept at the south-west corner of the aisled building. But the aisled rectangular plan, if it attained its highest development in East Anglia, had been reached already in other parts of England by gradual methods. It has sometimes been fathered upon aisled naves of friary churches, which, like the great nave of the Black friars at Norwich, afforded space for large congregations who came to hear sermons. But it is probable that the first churches which followed the course of expansion into the aisled rectangle were directly influenced by the example of the larger churches, like Lincoln, or, at a later date, York, which, in extending their eastern arms, aisled their quires, presbyteries, and eastern chapels, right up to the east wall. Thus the whole quire and chancel of Newark, with aisles extending their whole length, were planned in the early part of the fourteenth century, when the great eastern chapel, the "Angel Quire," of Lincoln, was little more than a generation old; and, although the progress of the work was long delayed, the eventual arrangement, in which the high altar was brought two bays forward from the east wall, and a spacious chapel was left at the back, exactly recalls the arrangements of Lincoln and York. Similarly the quire and chancel of the cruciform church of Holy Trinity at Hull are aisled to their full length: the arrangement, again, is that of a cathedral rather than a parish church. The influence of cathedral plans is clearly visible in St Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, and in the collegiate churches of Ottery St Mary and Crediton: but here the type followed is not that of Lincoln and York, but that more usual in the west and south of England at Hereford, Wells, Salisbury, Exeter, and elsewhere, where the aisles of the chancel are returned at the back of the east wall, and form a vestibule to a projecting aisleless lady chapel. This type of plan occurs outside its regular district at Tickhill, on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. But it is naturally exceptional, and would be used only where there was plenty of money and space to spare: it demands for its full effect a considerable elevation, involving a large clerestory, and a church could seldom, if ever, be found whose original plan invited expansion on these lines. On the other hand, the aisling of the chancel throughout was simply the logical development of the ordinary church plan: if the plans of cathedrals may have suggested the later developments at churches like Newark or Hull, the simple aisled rectangle, with its three parallel divisions, and without any clerestory to distinguish the nave from the aisles—a plan remarkably characteristic of Cornwall—came into existence in the ordinary course of things, by an extension of the wings of the building until they flanked the whole of the nave and chancel.

§ 74. The work done at Grantham in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries illustrates the purely natural development of the ordinary aisled church into the aisled rectangle. We have seen, in an earlier chapter, that, soon after 1300, the church consisted of an aisleless chancel, which was, however, overlapped at the west end by the north aisle of the nave; a nave, the north and south aisles of which followed different systems of spacing; a western tower and spire, engaged within the aisles; and north and south porches. Several chantries were founded in the church during the fourteenth century. Not long after the Black Death of 1349, the south aisle was extended eastward to the whole length of the chancel. The south wall of the chancel was pierced by an arcade; and the lady chapel thus formed was raised upon a double crypt. It was not until more than a century later that the east wall of the north aisle was taken down, and the "Corpus Christi chancel" built out, continuing the north aisle without a break, and completely flanking the north wall of the chancel, through which an arcade was made. Here the reason of expansion was obviously the growth of chantry chapels; and the expansion follows the simplest course. The last addition to the fabric was the present vestry, in which was a chantry founded by the Hall family. This was built out at right angles to the north aisle, at the point where the old work was met by the later extension. Not until the church had been fully aisled, and afforded no further room for new altars, were chantry chapels usually added in the shape of excrescences from the fabric.

Fig. 16. Plans of Grantham church: (3) about 1350; (4) present day.