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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

I am not sure, too, whether in sculpture the pre-Norman English may not have succeeded better than in architecture,—quaint and untechnical though their productions were.

I fear, however, that we must admit that, in our own particular art of architecture, we have little to learn from their buildings, however interesting and quaintly picturesque; and that, though belonging to a branch of the great round-arched family, they fail—almost of all effort, certainly of any success—in developing that manner of building into a style of art.

That fearful deluge, whose destructive waves swept with such overwhelming fury over our land after the decease of the last—the sainted—monarch of England’s older dynasty, may be likened to the sudden breaking down of its banks by some mighty river, which, while it sweeps from the earth the crops and the homesteads, leaving nothing but devastation on its track, yet deposits, in subsiding, a film of foreign substance upon the deluged soil, which adds to it a new productiveness, and, in time, far more than compensates for the loss and havoc which accompanied it.

So it was (at the least with architecture), after the Norman conquest. The old manner of building which, during a course of nearly five centuries, had failed to generate any development of a truly artistic character, was swept once and for ever from the face of the earth, so much so that some have denied its very existence; but there was substituted for it a style which, if at first little less rude than its predecessor, contained within itself the germs of a thoroughly sound artistic system, which speedily germinated into a series of developments, the most glorious which, perhaps, man has ever yet seen.

We have the clearest evidence, both from the statements of old writers, and such as we derive from our own observation, that the style of building introduced into England by the Normans, was viewed as a distinctly new one—a “novum genus compositionis,” and in no degree as a development of that which preceded it in this country.

How far the Norman style was distinct from the Romanesque of other parts of the north of France is a question which it would be curious, though difficult, to investigate. I think it might be shown that architecture, both in France and other countries of Western Europe, made a sudden forward start after the thousandth year of our era; possibly owing to the relief experienced at finding the futility of the prevalent fears that the world was to come to an end in that year. If such a simultaneous impulse did take place, it would be especially felt by a young and energetic race like the Normans, newly admitted into the Christian European family, recently reclaimed from the savage barbarism of Scandinavia, and grafted on to the old and comparatively civilised stock of France. Unlike, too, the other portions of France, Normandy had lost, in all probability, a large proportion of her ancient churches by the devastation of this very race while yet pagan; and nothing would be more natural than that, when Christianised, settled down, and instructed in the arts of their new neighbour, they would feel a special impulse towards repairing the effects of their own devastations, and would, while doing so, take a vigorous course in developing the manner of building in which they had been so newly instructed. I would not, however, wish to claim for the Normans any great degree of originality in architecture. Different districts of France each possessed their own local variety of Romanesque, though all clearly of one family; and Normandy, like the others, had its own variety, and that a vigorous one; and to ourselves the most interesting, as having been transplanted into our own country and become the parent of all our architectural developments. What was the form of Romanesque which prevailed in Neustria before it was overrun by the Northmen and transformed into Normandy, I think we have no means of judging,[14] the relics of its buildings being so few and fragmentary as to offer no distinct evidence; but just as the converted Northmen in the days of Canute were in this country the earnest restorers and builders of churches, so did those who had settled in France become the vigorous promoters of the art which they had once destroyed; while, by a remarkable coincidence, they were the means of bringing over in a succeeding generation to those of their own and kindred race in England the developments which they had generated under more favourable circumstances and guidance in the country which had for a century and a half adopted them into its own family.

If, however, the more vigorous pursuit of the building arts in France dates, as I have conjectured, from the opening of the eleventh century, and was contemporary with the revived impulse in this country under Canute, it follows that the mode of building introduced by the Normans was not only to the English, but in reality, a novum genus compositionis.

Quite in accordance with this is the character of what we call in this country Early Norman. Had Norman architecture been fully matured before its transplantation into England, we should not recognise its earlier productions by evidences founded upon rudeness and immaturity; yet such is unquestionably the case. Noble and vigorous as are the works of the Normans of the early days of their occupation of England, they undoubtedly bear evidences of an early and archaic stage of their form of art; and, even in Normandy itself, we do not find buildings of great architectural importance of dates much antecedent to those of the first structures built by the invaders of England. Early Norman in England would still be Early Norman, if in Normandy; so that we may consider the style, though generated on French soil, to have run the greater part of its course pari passu in both countries.

The investigations made and recently published by M. Bouet, of Caen, into the architectural history and changes of the abbey church of St. Stephen, founded in that city by the Conqueror, fully bear out this view, and show that the church, as built by William, was a very different and much more archaic structure than that which we now see; a large proportion of the more prominent features of which are proved to be the overlayings of later, though still Romanesque, times.[15]

As it is not my purpose, generally, to illustrate my description of the Norman style by its productions on its native soil, I shall select the church just named as the point de départ, by means of which I shall transfer my consideration of the style from Normandy to England. There are several churches of earlier date than this, such as parts of the abbey churches of Jumièges and Bernay,[16] but St. Stephen’s is clearly the great connecting link. In the first place, it was built by the Conqueror, and was in actual progress when he invaded England; and, in the second place, Lanfranc, the first abbot of St. Stephen’s, which was built under his direction, was also the first metropolitan of England appointed under the Norman dynasty, and immediately on his assumption of the see of Canterbury,—only four years after William’s arrival,—he commenced the rebuilding of the cathedral (then lying in ruins), after the almost precise design of his own abbey church at Caen. This abbey church, then, at Caen, and the metropolitan church of England, were built under the influence of the same monarch and at the same time; for, though St. Stephen’s was first begun, it would appear that Canterbury was finished first: they were built under the direction of the same ecclesiastical head, and in all leading features were on the same design, their plans being absolutely identical. The only difference of importance was the existence at Canterbury of the crypt, on which the choir was raised by many steps,—a reminiscence of the church built by St. Augustine, described in my last lecture, while such did not exist at St. Stephen’s. Both churches had naves of eight bays in length, in addition to which both had a western façade, with two flanking towers.