Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 2

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

About the same time we find St. Wilfrid thoroughly repairing, glazing, and “washing whiter than snow,” Paulinus’s Church, at York, and building two of great splendour (according to the ideas of the times), at Hexham and Ripon.

The former is described by a contemporary writer in ecstatic language, as “supported by various pillars and porticoes, adorned with a marvellous length and height of walls, and with passages of various turnings; nor was it ever,” he adds, “heard that such another church was erected on this side the Alps. He tells us also, of its ornaments of gold and silver and precious stones,” and of its altar, clothed with purple and silk hangings. This church remained, though in a damaged state, till the twelfth century, when the Norman prior describes it in very similar words to those used by the old Saxon historian. He speaks of the crypts and subterranean oratories, the walls of great height, “divided into three distinct stories supported by polished columns, some square, and others of various forms,” of the “capitals of the columns” ... and “the arch of sanctuary,” as “decorated with histories and images and different figures carved in relief in stone and painted, displaying a pleasing variety and wonderful beauty.” The body of the church was “surrounded by aisles and porticoes, which with wonderful art were divided above and below by walls and winding stairs.” Above he describes “galleries of stone,” by which “a vast multitude of persons might be there and pass round the church without being visible to any one in the nave below.”

Of the church at Ripon, the contemporary historian says that “he [St. Wilfrid] erected and finished at Ripon a basilica of polished stone from its foundations in the earth to the top, supported on high by various columns and porticoes.”

This church, founded by Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, was in the tenth century “reduced by wars and hostile incursions to a deserted and ruined solitude.”

All the buildings of the erection of which I have briefly enumerated the records, were founded within a century of the arrival of St. Augustine. Within the same century (about 680) we have reason to believe was erected the church at Brixworth, in Northamptonshire, which still remains in a fragmentary state, but, as I shall presently show, with sufficient proofs of its having been founded on the plan of a Roman basilica, with an aisled nave and an unaisled choir, an apsidal and aisled sanctuary raised high on a vaulted crypt. This church was but a humble dependency of the great monastery of Peterborough.

I would not have fatigued you with these documentary accounts, had I not felt it desirable to prove the importance of these earliest temples of our English Church. Cathedrals, churches, and monasteries were, in fact, built throughout the length and breadth of now Christianised England. The more important buildings were all, no doubt, of stone; many of the humbler ones of timber.

But times of trouble were at hand: “there is a time to break down” as well as “a time to build up;” and what the Christian English had built, the Pagan Northmen too often overthrew. Thus, in Alfred’s time (though in the reign of his predecessor), we find Croyland, Peterborough, Ely, and other monasteries ruthlessly destroyed, and in some cases they lay desolate for very long periods of time, though in others they were speedily restored.

At a later period, a new impulse was given to building by the introduction of the Benedictine order, and we find monasteries either founded or reformed on this rule throughout the kingdom.

Two descriptions of such Benedictine churches I will quote, the first being from the history of Ramsey Abbey, in the time of Dunstan.

The architect’s name is, for a wonder, mentioned in this case: it was Ædnoth, and he came, as it would seem, from Worcester. The church is said to have had “two towers rising above its roof. The smaller of these towards the west, in front of the Basilica, presented a fine spectacle from a distance to those entering the island. The larger one was in the centre of the square, standing upon four columns connected by arches stretching from aisle to aisle.” This laconic description seems to indicate a church with aisles, transepts, central tower, and a western tower. It may be, however, that the word “ala” signifies not an aisle, but merely a transept.