PREFACE.
While engaged upon their work on The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, the authors were frequently brought in contact with the various ecclesiastical structures throughout the country, and they naturally availed themselves of such opportunities to make notes and sketches of these interesting edifices.
These notes and sketches, together with others made during a long series of years, formed a considerable fund of information and a collection of drawings, the possession of which has induced the authors to undertake the completion of the illustration and description of the Ancient Architecture of Scotland, by adding an account of the Ecclesiastical to that of the Castellated and Domestic Architecture of the country already given to the public.
The size of the former book has been found to be somewhat restricted for many of the illustrations of the churches, but it has been thought best, for the sake of uniformity, to adhere to the same size and style as in the former work.
The subject of the Castles and Mansions, having been previously little investigated, afforded a fresh field for enquiry. The history and gradual development of the design and construction of these buildings had to be wrought out and arranged in periods according to the dates and the peculiarities of the structures, and an appropriate nomenclature had to be invented. These considerations added greatly to the interest of the subject.
In Ecclesiastical Architecture the case is different. The various styles and periods of Gothic architecture, both in this country and abroad, have for long been carefully investigated and defined. It thus only remains to apply to our Scottish edifices the system already adopted in the rest of Europe. An attempt is made in this work to do so, and attention is drawn to the various points in which Scottish Church Architecture agrees with and differs from that of other countries.
It has been suggested that our Ecclesiastical Architecture might be arranged in connection with the various orders of ecclesiastics by whom it was employed, and the specialities of the architecture of the various orders pointed out. This matter has not escaped attention; but it has been found impossible to form a system of nomenclature on that foundation.
The more this subject is investigated, the stronger is the conviction that there is, in this country at least, practically no difference in the style of architecture of the different orders of Churchmen from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The cathedrals and parish and other churches were all built on general and well understood principles. The monasteries also were all constructed on the same general plan. Whether the occupants were Canons Regular or Monks of the Cistercian, Tyronensian, Premonstratensian or other order, or even Franciscans or Dominicans, their convents were all designed on one general system.