Bell's Cathedrals: The Church of St. Martin, Canterbury / An Illustrated Account of its History and Fabric

by C. F. Routledge

Let us then assume that there was a Roman church in existence on St. Martin's Hill when Augustine came to Canterbury. Is there any evidence to strengthen this assumption in the present building? And, first, as regards the Nave. We have already alluded to what we consider the valuable evidence supplied by the style and texture of the pink plaster, also the variation of the mortar in the construction of the west windows from white mortar in the joints to pink mortar in the voussoirs of the arch, as well as the Roman-like character of the windows themselves. The objection that "Roman windows were never splayed" may be met (a) by the general statement that the introduction of light by means of a splay is so natural that the idea could not have escaped a Roman builder, especially in countries where there was less light than in Italy. Isidore of Seville, a contemporary of Gregory the Great, living in the midst of Roman work, must be describing what were the distinctive features of windows around him when he says "Fenestræ sunt quibus pars exterior angusta, et interior diffusa est"; and (b) Mr Roach Smith, in his "Collectanea Antiqua" gives several illustrations of Roman splayed windows at Aries, Vienne, etc., and we are informed that there is one at South Shields, mentioned by Mr Robert Blair, F.S.A.

The character of the walls in the nave of St. Martin's seems to us to agree pretty closely with the technical description of Roman masonry in this country as "chiefly constructed of stone or flint, according to the part of the country in which one or the other material prevailed, embedded in mortar, and bonded at certain intervals throughout with regular courses or layers of large flat bricks or tiles, which, from the inequality of thickness and size, do not appear to have been shaped in any regular mould."

The Nave then has strong claims to Roman origin, without any reference to the Chancel. Mr Livett, however, claims that, whatever be the date of the nave, the brickwork of the original Chancel is certainly earlier, and contends that "the oldest portion of the existing building comprises (1) the side walls of the chancel, extending for 20 feet; (2) the foundations of the destroyed Adjunct that once stood on the south side of the chancel; (3) a portion of the east wall of the nave on either side of the chancel-arch, and (4) certain foundations under the floor of the nave, supposed to be a continuation of the chancel side-walls." It is possible that he is rather too sanguine in concluding that a general agreement has been reached on these points. But, assuming (for the sake of argument) that the chancel is the earlier, then, if we can establish a reasonable probability of a Roman date for the nave, cadit quæstio, so far as the "pro-Saxon" controversialists are concerned. On the other hand, even though it be proved that the Nave is post-Roman, yet still the Chancel may be Roman, since it is in their opinion of confessedly greater antiquity.

Is there anything in the Chancel to militate against its Roman origin? It is built in opus lateritium, bricks laid evenly upon one another, an ordinary style of Roman masonry; for instances of which we may refer to remains found at the Roman villas at Wingham and Darenth, at the Studfall Roman castrum at Lympne, the blocked sluice-gate in the Silchester city wall, and countless other places. Allusion has been already made to Mr Micklethwaite's paper on "Saxon Church Building," in which, perhaps somewhat too confidently, he assigns to the Saxon periods the churches of Reculver, Brixworth, St. Pancras, etc. etc. It is a remarkable fact that the plan of St. Martin's Church (either with or without its reputed eastern apse) does not in many essential points agree with the plan of a single one of the churches therein described. And yet, if we accept the date of St. Martin's as post-Roman, it must have been built within less than a hundred years of most of them. He lays special stress on the apparent identity of character between the work at St. Pancras and in the Chancel of St. Martin's, saying that the "date of one must be very near to that of the other," and as he does not believe that St. Pancras can be Roman, therefore the same may be predicated of St. Martin's. But he makes many assumptions to prove this, taking imaginary sketches and theories for ascertained facts. Even so, the shape of the supposed apse is different in the two, and there is no north porch at St. Martin's as there is at St. Pancras, and if it can be established (as seems likely from recent discoveries) that there was an original chancel-arch at St. Martin's west of the side-chapel, the dissimilarity is even more apparent.

It is outside our purpose to discuss the date of St. Pancras, though many authorities maintain the possibility of its Roman origin. But, granting (for the moment) that St. Pancras' Church was built or restored by Augustine (and this is the latest date assigned to it), the identity in plan and character of the two churches is disputable. Of course, taking St. Martin's as it now exists, there is no similarity whatever, either in regard to the masonry of the nave, or the general outline. There is more similarity (with the exception of the points above mentioned) between St. Pancras and the assumed shape of St. Martin's chancel. But here, too, are points of difference. The walls of St. Pancras are only 1 ft. 10 in. in thickness; they are constructed almost entirely of broken bricks, roughly cut to a triangular shape and fitted together in the core, the interstices being filled up with small bits of brick. The walls of St. Martin's chancel are 2 ft. 2 in. thick, and contain a much larger proportion of whole bricks, about 12 inches wide, laid side by side in each course, the interval between them being filled up with mortar and small stones. We may mention also the difference in the treatment of the division between nave and chancel. In the churches of St. Pancras, Reculver, Brixworth, Peterborough, Lympne, and Rochester there was a triple chancel-arch. In St. Martin's the space is too narrow to admit of any such arrangement. If we carry back the original building of St. Pancras to Roman times (and we must remember that King Ethelbert is said by Bede to have allowed the Italian Missionaries to build and repair churches in all places) we do away with the difficulty as "to the temple of the heathen god being built after the fashion of a Christian church."

We may pass over, as unworthy of serious discussion, the argument that St. Martin's cannot be a Roman church, because no existing Roman churches have yet been discovered in this country! and that it is not Roman because its ground-plan does not tally with the ground-plan of the Roman Church at Silchester. In the first place, we do not know what the original ground-plan of St. Martin's was, and it has not yet been definitely settled whether it may not have possessed side-aisles. And secondly, to contend that it cannot be Roman because it is unlike the church at Silchester would be to limit the capabilities of Roman builders to one monotonous design, perpetually and exactly reproduced for a century or more, which would be contrary both to reason and experience.

There is, however, one objection remaining which must be faced, because it is put forward with all the professional knowledge of a skilful architect. The nave of the church is described as "being built of old stuff used anyway just as it came to hand, and tells of a time when there were ruins near, at which the builders were free to help themselves—a state of things unlikely in Roman Kent, but likely enough after, the wars which accompanied the English occupation." This seems a forcible argument, but it is not altogether borne out by facts, neither is it a fair description. That a great part of St. Martin's Nave is patchy and rudely built no one can deny; but let us consider what periods of destructiveness and neglect it would have passed through, supposing it to have been built in Roman times. Durovernum (Canterbury) was abandoned by the Britons flying before the Jutish invasion, and was at first left unoccupied by the conquerors themselves. Its site lay for many a year uninhabited and desolate; its very name was forgotten, and the church would naturally have fallen into a state of partial ruin. Restored at the coming of Queen Bertha, probably ravaged by the Danes, repaired and enlarged to a great extent in the Early English period, gradually falling once more into decay, in what condition should we expect its walls to be? Even within the last thirty years some interesting features have been destroyed, and the walls have been carelessly patched. When we consider all this, are we surprised if parts of it look like old stuff used anyway? But (as we have stated) this is not a correct description of the lower portion of the walls, especially where they have been comparatively preserved behind the woodwork of the present pews. And even if the description "old stuff," etc., be applicable to portions of the nave walling, the same description would equally apply to the undoubted Roman work in the Pharos at Dover.

Is there not, too, such a thing as a period of decadence in any style? Just as there is good and bad Saxon work, good and bad Norman work, so must there have been good and bad Roman work. We are told in an account of the Roman excavations at Silchester that "examination showed that the rubble masonry of the whole western range (of the basilica) was of a very poor character." "The stones (in a part of the Roman wall of London) form a mere skin, between the tile bonding courses, to the thick irregular rubble core." In the same wall, above the bonding course of three rows of tiles at the ancient ground-level, "the body of the wall is composed throughout its height of masses of ragstone, with now and then a fragment of chalk, bedded very roughly in mortar which has been pitched in, not run in, sometimes with so little care as to leave occasional empty spaces amongst the stones." It seems useless to multiply quotations for the purpose of establishing an obvious fact—viz. that granting a general idea and method pervading a building (as, we believe, there is clearly in St. Martin's nave), it is quite possible that at a time of decadence, and in the hands of inferior (perhaps British) workmen, this idea should be somewhat roughly carried out. This would be eminently the case if we attribute the erection of the nave towards the close of the fourth century—not so very long before the Roman evacuation of Britain.

Since writing the above, we have been informed by Mr Micklethwaite that he places the nave of St. Martin's as dating from the seventh century—but he gives no reason for doing so, except that he thinks the form of the western windows and some other things about the work indicate that period—and he acknowledges that there is nothing to fix the date closer. We have, however, at some length, pointed out reasons that seem to us to militate against his theory, and they need not be re-stated. Though his opinion is deservedly weighty, he has not been able to be present at any of the excavations.