| Fig. 226.—Tower, Earls Barton. | Fig. 227.—Tower and Western Porch, Barton-upon-Humber. |
The tower of Clapham Church, in Bedfordshire, is chiefly remarkable for its great height and plainness. The chancel arch, of great simplicity, here remains, as did one window of the chancel (a small bonnet-arched opening like some in the tower itself) till destroyed recently by a stupid builder.
One more building, I must notice. It has often been mentioned that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers built largely of timber; and, strange to say, after the lapse of more than eight centuries, we have one of their timber structures remaining!
Edmund, king of East Anglia, who had been slain by the Danes in the ninth century, had been canonised; and on the invasion by Sweyn, more than a century later in 1011, his relics were removed from Bury St. Edmund’s to London for security. On their being
Fig. 228.—Barnach Tower, Northamptonshire.
carried back in 1013, an old register of Bury informs us, “he was also sheltered near Aungre, where wooden chapel remains as a memorial unto this day.”