Westminster Abbey, A.D. 1066.
Arcade of the Refectory, now in a Canon’s garden.
works which were going on at this period; the cathedrals and large monasteries must have occupied nearly all their attention. The ordinary parish churches which required rebuilding must have been left to the Saxons themselves, and were probably built in the same manner as before, with such slight improvements as they might have gleaned from the Norman works.
The Normans themselves were, however, but little in advance of the English in the building art: the style which we call Norman correctly for this country, is called by the French archæologists Anglo-Norman, and with reason; that style was developed as much in England as in Normandy.
Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, was the great architect of the time of William the Conqueror. The first building of his that we have remaining is the keep of his castle at Malling, in Kent, called St. Leonard’s Tower, which was built about 1070. This is of earlier character than any keep in Normandy. M. de Caumont examined the sites of the castles of all the barons who came over to England with William, and he found no masonry of that period in any one of them. Their castles had consisted of very fine earthworks and wood only[C]. Soon after this time,
Early Norman Keep at Malling, Kent, built by Gundulph A.D, 1070.
Gundulph built the keep of the castle in London called the White Tower, and the cathedral of Rochester, of which we have a part of the crypt, and some remains of the wall of the nave and north transept. The whole of this work is extremely rude; the construction is usually rubble. When of ashlar, the joints are very wide, and the capitals of the shafts clumsy.