The church is a fine specimen of Norman architecture; remarkable as to its plan, in having the choir of considerably greater width than the nave. The portion east of the tower is composed of three distinct parts, unequal in size, the central being the narrowest, as is strikingly the case in the church at Great Yarmouth; but all of the same height, and each of the lateral ones exactly equalling in its width the length of the transept to which it is attached; and thus, also, the choir and transepts, taken collectively, form nearly a square, except that, to the end of the middle compartment, is attached a circular apsis, of an unusually small size; and, seen from the inside of the church, this disproportion becomes even more conspicuous: the great thickness of the wall necessarily subtracting much from the space. It even strikes the eye as being less than it really is, from being subdivided into a number of small arches; which, with the vaulted roof, lighted by the extremely narrow windows below, and the larger ones above, give this end of the church a very peculiar appearance.
PLATE LVIII. AND LIX.
CHURCH OF BIEVILLE.
Plate 58. Church of Bieville near Caen.
From the North West.
It is only when considered as a curious relic of ancient ecclesiastical architecture, that the church of Bieville can lay claim to any attention whatever. History, even in its lowest department, topography, is altogether silent with regard both, to the building and the parish, except so far as to record that the church was among the dependencies of the royal abbey of St. Stephen, at Caen; though even in this character, it does not appear till the middle of the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned in one of the registers of the diocese of Bayeux. Its situation is about four miles north of Caen.
Taken as a whole, the church of Bieville has probably no parallel in Normandy or in England. The upper story of the tower alone is of a subsequent æra, and that, the earliest style of pointed architecture: all the rest of the structure is purely Norman, and of extreme simplicity. The church of St. Peter, at Northampton, said to have been erected by Simon de St. Liz, during the reign of William the Conqueror, is encircled at the height of the clerestory by a row of small arches, similar in their proportions and decorations to those at Bieville; but they are there continued in an uninterrupted line round the building, while at Bieville they occupy only a comparatively small portion of it. In the nave of this latter church, they are disposed regularly in triplets, the central one only pierced for a window, and each three separated by a flat Norman buttress.
The western front, represented in plate [fifty-eight], is divided by plain string-courses into three stories of irregular height: the basement contains only the door, which is entered by a richly-ornamented arch, (see plate [fifty-nine], fig. B.) surmounted by a broad drip-stone, decorated with quatrefoils, and terminating at each end in a human head of classical character. The lowest moulding of this arch is considerably more flattened than the upper, a peculiarity that is likewise observable in the interior arch to the great door-way at Castle-Acre Priory, in Norfolk.[116] In the second story are six arches, supported by eight pillars, with capitals and bases of ordinary character: even these, contiguous as they stand, are divided into two equal sets, by the intervention of a flat space in the centre, so narrow, as to wear the appearance of a pilaster. Here, too, as in the nave, the central arch of each compartment is alone pierced for a window.—The upper story has only a single window, precisely resembling those below, but flanked on each side by a circular one, similar to that in the front of the neighboring chapel of the Délivrande:[117] or, if a comparison be sought among Norman edifices in England, to those in the tower of Norwich cathedral;[118] in the same part of the church of St. James, at Bury St. Edmunds;[119] and in the east end of the church of the Hospital of St. Cross.[120] In point of general character, the western front of the church of Bieville may not unaptly be compared with that of the chapel of the Délivrande, or of the hospital of St. Leonard, at Stamford, as figured by Carter.[121] The tower of the church at Bieville is well calculated to serve as a specimen of the towers of the village churches, comprized in a circuit of twenty miles round Caen. Among others, those of Soumont, Ifs, Soulangy, Potigny, and the Lower Allemagne, to the south, and of Lyons, Oyestraham, and several more, to the north, greatly resemble it.