St. Alban’s was an exceedingly wealthy abbey; it had estates in almost every county in England, and at the present value of money its income would amount to at least a million. Its conventual buildings must have been immense. One of the guest-halls, in addition to parlours and bedrooms, had stables for three hundred horses. Of all these vast structures nothing remains but one of the gatehouses, built in 1380. In it were detained the French prisoners in the Napoleonic wars; afterwards it became a common gaol, now it houses the Grammar School.
NAVE, NORTH SIDE.
Internally, the church is divided from west to east, in ancient monastic fashion, into (1) nave, (2) choir, (3) sanctuary, (4) Saints’ chapel, (5) retro-choir or ante-chapel, (6) Lady chapel. (1) The ritual nave occupies the ten western bays only of the architectural nave, and terminates at the Holy Rood screen. (2) The ritual choir is not placed in the eastern limb; but, following a far more ancient precedent, in the three eastern bays of the architectural nave, and in the crossing (that part of the transept which is beneath the central tower). This was the place of the choir in the primitive basilicas, and in the early monastic churches. The “Coro” of the Spanish cathedrals is still placed in the nave. The same arrangement survives in this country in Westminster Abbey and Norwich, and has lately been restored at Peterborough. (3) The sanctuary extends from the tower to the great reredos, and provided a free and unencumbered space in front of the high altar, which “dwelt apart.” (4) The Saint’s chapel was occupied, like the feretory at Winchester, by magnificent shrines which towered behind and above the high altar, visible far down the nave, at least before the great reredos was erected. (5) The retro-choir or ante-chapel provided a processional path, or ambulatory, or eastern choir aisle at the back of the shrines. Romsey and Hereford possess the earliest of these processional paths, Winchester the largest. (6) The Lady chapel occupies its normal position, to the extreme east. But where there was no room for farther eastward extension of the cathedral, the Lady chapel may be found on the north or south side of the choir, as at Bristol and Oxford. Here, as at Salisbury and Winchester, the high roofs do not extend over retro-choir and Lady chapel, which are only one story high; at York and Lincoln and Ely, the church retains its full height uninterruptedly to the extreme east end; the ritualistic divisions of the church being marked by screens only.
LADY-CHAPEL LOOKING EAST.
In Norman times the church did not extend so far eastward. The sanctuary ended in three semicircular apses, of which those of the aisles were semicircular inside but square outside, as at Romsey. And, in lieu of eastern aisles, the transepts had each a pair of little semicircular chapels, the arches leading into which may still be seen in their eastern walls.
“In 1077, Paul, a monk of St. Stephen’s, Caen (the Abbaye-aux-hommes), was elected Abbot, through the influence of Archbishop Lanfranc, whose kinsman he was.” In these words we have the origin of St. Alban’s Cathedral; and not of St. Alban’s only, but of all the mediæval architecture of our land, whether Romanesque or Gothic. Before the Norman conquest we had a native style of our own; a kind of primitive Romanesque, of which remains survive at Jarrow, Wing, Worth, Deerhurst, and elsewhere, as well as in the crypts of Ripon, Hexham, and Repton. But the invasion of the Normans changed all this. The primitive indigenous Romanesque of England was thrown aside in favour of the far more advanced Romanesque of Normandy. From the great monastery of St. Stephen, Caen, came Lanfranc, the first, and Anselm, the second Norman Archbishop of Canterbury. When Lanfranc set to work to rebuild Canterbury Cathedral, he made it in length and breadth and height an exact copy of the church of St. Stephen, Caen. What Lanfranc did at Canterbury, the Walkelins did at Winchester and Ely, and Abbot Paul at St. Alban’s. They set to work to rebuild their churches on the vast scale, and with all the improvements, of the Romanesque architecture of Caen and Normandy. St. Stephen’s, Caen, is therefore the link between the architecture of Normandy and that of England; it is the mother-church of all the cathedrals of our land. More than this: Lanfranc and Anselm were by birth, not Normans, but Italians; Lanfranc was born at Pavia, Anselm at Aosta. Paul was a kinsman of Lanfranc. All three, then, came from the great plain of Lombardy; and it was through such scholars and theologians as these that the architecture of Lombardy found its way into Normandy. For the architecture of Normandy is in character mainly Lombardic. Therefore, just as Canterbury and Winchester and St. Alban’s are the offspring of St. Stephen’s, Caen; so St. Stephen’s itself is the child of S. Ambrogio and S. Eustorgio, Milan; S. Stephen, Verona; S. Sophia, Padua; and other ninth- and tenth-century churches of Lombardy and the neighbourhood.
RAMRYGE’S CHANTRY.