The order was suppressed in 1545. The church at Little Maplestead was built early in the 12th century, and in 1186 the adjoining manor was given by Juliana Doisnel to this order, which gift was confirmed by King John and Henry III. This church is thought to reproduce with more fidelity than the others the original church of the Holy Sepulchre.

These famous Norman round-chancelled churches have much in common with the old basilica form.

It must be pointed out that the arbitrary divisions into which architecture has been divided—Norman, Gothic, etc., are pure figures of the imagination, as by a series of easy transitions, one style became gradually merged into the next without any hard and fast dividing lines whatever. The periods during which one style became gradually blended into another are called the periods of transition.

The Transition.

Architecture being progressive, it was only by the gradual development of one style from another that the art was enabled to advance with social progress, the literature and other arts of the country. The transition from the Norman to the Early English style may be ascribed to a period somewhat earlier than the 12th century, when a great change in the construction of the arch began to manifest itself. Alone, however, the form of the arch is no real test, for many pure Norman works have pointed arches. The square abacus may be taken as the best test. In its incipient state the pointed arch exhibited a change of form only, whilst the accessories and details remained the same as before; and although this change gradually led to the Early Pointed style in a pure state, with mouldings and features altogether distinct from those of the Norman, and to the general disuse, in the 13th century, of the semi-circular arch, it was for a while so intermixed as, from its first appearance to the close of the 12th century, to constitute that state of transition called the semi-Norman.

Windows showing the Origin of Tracery.
Click to [ENLARGE]

CHAPTER IV.

THE EARLY ENGLISH STYLE.

The origin of what is loosely called Gothic architecture—which is generally considered to include the styles, with their transitions, from Early English to late Perpendicular, or Tudor-Gothic—is not free from obscurity, but it is certain that it began to be employed in ecclesiastical edifices about the time that the Goths settled in Italy, although all the available evidence goes to prove that the style originated and underwent its earliest developments in the north-west of Europe, and penetrated by slow degrees to the south and east.