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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The other church I will refer to under this head is the Cathedral of Winchester, as rebuilt in the reign of Edgar. It had been founded in the days of St. Birinus, the first missionary to the West Saxons, about 635. Athelwold, made Bishop of Winchester in 963, was a great restorer of churches which had been devastated by the Danes. Among those restored by him may be especially named those of Ely and Peterborough. He renovated and partly rebuilt his own cathedral at Winchester, which was rededicated in 980. It is described by Wolstan, in a poem addressed to the succeeding Bishop, St. Elphege. He speaks of the “lofty walls and solid aisles, and various arches; the many chapels which so distract the attention, that a stranger is at a loss which way to turn, seeing doors open to him on all sides.” He mentions also the “fine roofs of intricate structure, and the brilliant variety of the fabric.” St. Elphege seems to have added a new apse, with “secret crypts, where secret recesses lay on every side, the structure of which supported the holy altar, and the venerable relics of the saints.” “A sparkling tower,” also, “that reflects from heaven the first rays of the sun.” “It has five compartments pierced by open windows, and on all four sides as many ways are open. The lofty peaks of the tower are capped with pointed roofs, and are adorned with various and sinuous vaults, curved with well-skilled contrivance. Above these stands a rod with golden balls, and at the top a mighty golden cock, which boldly turns its face to every wind that blows.”

Again, however, came the ruthless Northman, and destroyed church after church throughout the entire course of his desolating march.

No former incursion probably had been so fatal to architecture as that of Sweyn. Its very success, however, brought its own cure; for his son Canute, being allowed to succeed to the English throne, not only became Christian, but devoted himself with exemplary piety to repairing the devastations which the sacrilege of his father and himself had perpetrated. He not only repented, but brought forth fruits meet for repentance; so that the last half-century of the history of the pre-Norman England, is replete with accounts of the restoration and building of churches.

The foregoing notices are sufficient to show that throughout the continuance of the pre-Norman English Church buildings were constantly being erected of considerable dimensions and sometimes of great intricacy, and even of some degree of splendour of design; and that the more important of these were uniformly of stone, though the humbler ones were often of timber. It further shows that the architectural style of these buildings, as well as the internal arrangement of the churches, was intended to be an imitation of the Roman buildings of the same period.

We will now proceed to inquire into the existence and character of any remains of buildings of this period.

Of the important structures, I may say at once that nothing remains; the ambitious character of the Norman builders having led them to reconstruct on a larger scale all the cathedrals and great monastic churches, excepting, indeed, that one which they found in course of re-erection at Westminster, and which was designed in their own style.

There exist, however, throughout the length and breadth of the land, remnants, and, in a few instances, large portions, of buildings of a wholly exceptional character; not assignable to the Norman or any other of the well-known styles which have prevailed in England; but evidently of earlier date. They are clearly not early Norman; for, with the single exception of the round arch, they have nothing in common with the specimens of that style erected in the reign of the Conqueror, but are clearly of a style quite distinct from them. In one instance, we have a tower known to have been erected in the days of the Conqueror, in juxtaposition with the remains of a church in this more ancient style; and in many other instances we have Norman features in connection with these mysterious remains, and to every eye asserting the entire diversity of their art. In some instances, again, as at Monk Wearmouth, Jarrow, Brixworth, and Deerhurst, the remains of this style are on the sites where churches are recorded to have been built in Anglo-Saxon days. These remains correspond in character with buildings represented in Saxon illuminated books. They evince in many instances evidence of having been built in rude imitation of the Roman works of those periods, though in some instances they seem also to suggest the imitation of timber construction.

The most obvious rules of induction, then, point to the conclusion that these are the remains of buildings of Anglo-Saxon date.[4]

The leading characteristics of these remains (though not all of them to be found in every instance, and probably varying with the date) are as follows:—The frequent decoration of the external walls with pilaster strips, as is so common in early Italian churches, and afterwards in Germany; the bonding of these by alternate vertical and horizontal stones; the imitation of this mode of bonding in quoins where no such strips are used, and in the jambs of doorways and other openings, excepting where Roman brick is of frequent occurrence; the jambs of doorways running square through the thickness of the wall, without recessed orders, and the door itself hung against the inner face of the wall; the frequent use of a kind of pilaster on either side both of doorways and archways, the impost moulding sometimes breaking round, and sometimes stopping against them, and a continuation of the pilaster going round the arch;[5] the occasional use of triangular heads to doors and windows; the use of what are called baluster columns, or short pillars, turned in a lathe, not unlike Elizabethan balusters, bulging in the middle and ornamented with a number of mouldings of trifling relief, such as turners of all ages delight in (these are used for the division of windows, and other purposes); the windows which are usually set high in the wall, are often equally splayed within and without, and the arches sometimes more splayed than the jambs, and slanting upwards like an old-fashioned bonnet; a very abnormal kind of mouldings, unlike those of any other style, and generally a very strange archaic look in the whole of the work, which makes one conscious of being in the presence of the works of men in a very pristine state of civilisation, the style having little or no relationship to those Mediæval buildings with which we are familiar.

I ought, also, to mention the frequent use of tall, narrow towers, unbroken, or nearly so, in their vertical outline, either simply quoined with the long and short work already mentioned, or with their surfaces diversified by pilaster strips and string-courses, the intervening surfaces being usually built of rubble and plastered. The belfry-windows are often of two lights, separated by a baluster or other form of pillar set in the middle of the wall, and bearing a transverse bracket of stone, to enable it to support the whole thickness of the wall. Such towers are clearly imitations of the Italian campanile, though in a rude form. They occasionally have oblique strips as well as the vertical pillars and horizontal strings, which suggest the idea of an imitation of timber-work; at other times the pilasters are united by arches.