Fig. 383.—Pointed Arcading from the Cathedral of Palermo.
The Romanesque doorway (Fig. 384) from the South of France illustrates the somewhat motley character of this architecture in that part of the country. Some churches of this locality show the receding arches in the doors and arcading, supported by engaged columns, which feature was developed very much in the later Gothic.
The Romanesque style in England is seen in buildings that were erected before the Norman Conquest.
Fig. 384.—Door of St. Gabriel’s, South of France.
The buildings of this period—the eleventh century—have received the name of “Anglo-Saxon.” They are characterized by the round openings of doors and windows, the latter being sometimes triangular-headed. The tower of Earl’s Barton, in Northamptonshire, is an example of Anglo-Saxon. It has pilaster-like strips of stone decorating and tying the masonry together; small triangular and circular stone-work connecting the perpendicular strips—a reminiscence of arcading—gives a distinctive appearance of wood-framing to the whole work, which is probably a copy of the earlier timber construction.
The Anglo-Saxon tower at Sompting, Sussex, and the Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon (A.D. 705), are also examples of early work executed[executed] in England prior to the Norman Conquest (1066).
The work we understand as Norman in England was in existence long before the Conqueror’s time, and it is quite likely that the subsequent English Gothic would have developed just the same if the Normans had not invaded England.
The English Romanesque, or Early Norman style, dates, as near as possible, from Edward the Confessor’s time (1041-1065). This king founded the great Abbey of Westminster, of which the Dormitory substructure walls and vaulting still remain, but the rest of the original church has disappeared. On the Continent and in England, just after the year 1000, a great building period set in, as for many years prior to this date a corresponding period of an opposite kind, or a lethargy in the life of the Christian peoples, and consequently an inactivity in all building operations, was manifested, owing to the prophecy that the end of the world would come in the year 1000. When this was found to be a delusion, a building craze spread over Europe, and the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries were the great building ages, when both Christian and Saracenic architecture advanced with leaps and bounds.