Fig. 229.—Tower, Sompting, Sussex.
This chapel still exists at Greensted, near Ongar (Figs. [230], [231]). It consists of cleft oak-trees grooved and tongued together by their edges, and let into grooves in horizontal cills and heads. The exterior of the trees was exposed on the outside of the church, the sapwood of which having long since perished, the furrowed and gnarled heart is now seen, presenting a most ancient and interesting appearance. It is more than thirty years since I visited this most venerable relic. Since then it has been repaired; but I trust that its antiquity has not been compromised, and that it will long remain as a relic of the royal saint, and a visible exponent of the old Anglo-Saxon verb getymbrian—to build.
I must not, however, go on enumerating specimens: they will be found in great numbers in several publications, as Mr. Bloxam’s Principles of Gothic Architecture, Mr. Parker’s Glossary, Britton’s Antiquities, and elsewhere; while very interesting articles have been written on them by Mr. Freeman, Mr. Ayliffe Poole, Mr. Paley, and others. In my own practice I every now and then fall in with minor specimens not mentioned in books, and often walled up and hidden from view, to make way for later work.
Fig. 230.—Chapel at Greensted, Essex.
Taken from a drawing made in 1748.