A. The church of the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, presents an interesting combination of semicircular, intersecting, and pointed arches, of cotemporaneous date, enriched with the zig-zag and other Norman decorative mouldings, and is a structure, in appearance and detail, of much later date than the church at Buildwas Abbey, though the same early era has been assigned to each.
St. Joseph’s Chapel, Glastonbury, now in ruins, supposed to have been erected in the reigns of Henry the Second and Richard the First, is perhaps the richest specimen now remaining of the Semi-Norman or transition style, and is remarkable for the profusion of sculptured detail and combination of round and intersecting arches. In the remains of Malmesbury Abbey Church a Norman triforium with semicircular arches is supported on pointed arches which are enriched with Norman mouldings, and spring from massive cylindrical Norman piers. The interior of Rothwell Church, Northamptonshire, has much of Semi-Norman character: the aisles are divided from the nave by four lofty, plain, and triple-faced pointed arches, with square edges, springing from square piers with attached semicylindrical shafts on each side, and banded round midway between the bases and capitals; and the latter, which are enriched with sculptured foliage, are surmounted by square abaci; the west doorway is also of Semi-Norman character, and pointed, and is set within a projecting mass of masonry resembling the shallow Norman buttress. The circular part of St. Sepulchre’s Church, Northampton, has early pointed arches, plain in design, springing from Norman cylindrical piers. In the circular part of the Temple Church, London, dedicated A. D. 1185, the piers consist of four clustered columns banded round midway between the bases and capitals, and approximating the Early English style of the thirteenth century; and these support pointed arches, over which and continued round the clerestory wall is an arcade of intersecting semicircular arches, and above these are round-headed windows.
Q. What particular specimen of the Semi-Norman style has been noticed by any cotemporaneous author, and the date of it clearly defined?
A. The eastern part of Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of Trinity Chapel and the circular adjunct called Becket’s Crown. The building of these commenced the year following the fire which occurred A. D. 1174, and was carried on without intermission for several successive years. Gervase, a monk of the cathedral, and an eyewitness of this re-edification, wrote a long and detailed description of the work in progress, and a comparison between that and the more ancient structure which was burnt; he does not, however, notice in any clear and precise terms the general adoption of the pointed arch and partial disuse of the round arch in the new building, from which we may perhaps infer they were at that period indifferently used, or rather that the pointed arch was gradually gaining the ascendancy[83-*].
Q. How long does the Semi or Mixed Norman style appear to have prevailed?
A. Though we can neither trace satisfactorily the exact period of its introduction, or even that of its final extinction, (for it appears to have merged gradually into the pure and unmixed pointed style of the thirteenth century,) we have perhaps no remains of this kind to which we can attribute an earlier date than that included between the years 1130 and 1140, unless we except the intersecting arches at St. Botulph’s, Priory Church, Colchester, which may be a few years earlier; and it appears to have prevailed, in conjunction or intermixed with the Norman style, from thence to the close of the twelfth century, and probably to a somewhat later period.
[76-*] The figure of a fish, whence the form vesica piscis originated, was one of the most ancient of the Christian symbols, emblematically significant of the word ἴχθυς, which contained the initial letters of the name and titles of our Saviour. The symbolic representation of a fish we find sculptured on some of the sarcophagi of the early Christians discovered in the catacombs at Rome; but the actual figure of a fish afterwards gave place to an oval-shaped compartment, pointed at both extremities, bearing the same mystical signification as the fish itself, and formed by two circles intersecting each other in the centre. This was the most common symbol used in the middle ages, and thus delineated it abounds in Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts. Every where we meet with it during the middle ages, in religious sculptures, in painted glass, on encaustic tiles, and on seals; and in the latter, that is, in those of many of the ecclesiastical courts, the form is yet retained. Even with respect to the origin of the pointed arch, that vexata quæstio of antiquaries, with what degree of probability may it not be attributed to this mystical form? It is indeed in this symbolical figure that we see the outline of the pointed arch plainly developed at least a century and half before the appearance of it in architectonic form. And in that age full of mystical significations, the twelfth century, when every part of a church was symbolized, it appears nothing strange if this typical form should have had its weight towards originating and determining the adoption of the pointed arch.—Internal Decorations of English Churches, British Critic, April, 1839.