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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The transepts of both churches were of two unequal bays, and the outer bay of each had a gallery all across it, supported by a massive pillar (as at Winchester); in each there was in both transepts an apsidal chapel repeated on the triforium level; and though both have lost their original choirs, the probability is that both were of two bays long, with the addition of a simple apse. Professor Willis has shown that their very dimensions were nearly identical.

It has been discovered that at St. Stephen’s the western towers were a subsequent addition, though so early that little difference can be observed in their details. I judge from this that the towers at Canterbury were a deviation from the design of St. Stephen’s, which was at once rectified by adding them to the prototypic building.

The piers of St. Stephen’s are oblong masses, divided at each end into groups of three large shafts. To these are added, on the side facing the nave, shafts, alternately single and triple, which ran up to the roof. The triforium storey is almost a repetition, to a less height, of the main arcade; though, where it passes the western towers, it is divided into two sub-arches by a single shaft. Mr. Parker, whose excellent paper on the subject will be found among the Transactions of the Institute of British Architects, seems to think that the triforium floor was of timber, and the aisle unvaulted. Professor Willis was under the impression that it had had no floor, but that the two storeys were united, as is now the case at Rochester. This, I think, seems disproved by Mr. Parker’s paper, and by M. Bouet’s drawings, which show a doorway opening into the triforium storey. This storey is at present vaulted above with a half-barrel vault. This Mr. Parker thinks an addition; but M. Bouet shows a remnant of it embedded in the east wall of the transept, where the old choir aisle has been removed, which seems to suggest its being original.

The greatest alteration which the older portions of the church have undergone is the addition of vaulting to the nave and the entire transformation of the design of the clerestory in a later Norman style, which, to a casual observer, seems to work in so well with the older parts as to appear original. M. Bouet and Mr. Parker have found the remnants of the original arcade,—which were uniform in height and incompatible with vaulting,—both in the nave and transepts, proving that vaulting was not contemplated in the first erection.

I am, however, rather anticipating my history, and must fall back upon a somewhat earlier period; for, though Canterbury Cathedral was probably the first church erected in England after the Norman Conquest, it was nevertheless by no means the first Norman church; for it was in a Norman minster that the Conqueror had, full four years before the works at Canterbury were begun, received at the hands of an English archbishop the crown of England.

You will remember that as early as 1013 Ethelred and Emma, the parents of King Edward the Confessor, had fled with their children from the fury of King Sweyn to the court of Richard le Bon, duke of Normandy. It followed that the education and tastes of the future king were Norman; and long subsequently, after he ascended the throne, England so swarmed with Normans as not only to excite discontent but to give occasion to civil war. It was, then, natural that, when King Edward determined (about 1050) to refound the Abbey of Westminster, he should adopt for his new work a Norman rather than an English design. We accordingly find it spoken of by William of Malmesbury (writing in the following century) as “That church which he, the first in England, had erected in that mode of composition which now nearly all emulate in its costly expenditure.” Matthew Paris,—a century later,—says that Edward “was buried in the church which he had constructed in that new mode of composition from which many of those afterwards constructing churches, taking example, had emulated it in its costly expenditure.” These notices by men of whom the one knew most, and the other might have known all, of the Norman churches in England, are sufficient to prove the Confessor’s church to have been not of Anglo-Saxon but of Norman architecture; and, as they thought, the earliest of its style in this country.

Whether that erected by Earl Harold at Waltham, and consecrated in 1060, was in the same style, we cannot ascertain. His proclivities were certainly not Norman, yet he may have adopted the fashion just coming into vogue, though we find that other churches built nearly as late, and some even subsequent to the Conquest, still retained the older and more national character.

The church built by the Confessor at Westminster is thus described by a contemporary writer:—

“The house (domus) of the principal altar, constructed with very lofty vaultings, is compassed round with squared (stone) work uniformly jointed: the aisle[17] around the building itself is shut off by a double tier of arches from either side, the continuity of the work being firmly consolidated in every direction.

“Further, the cross (crossing) of the temple which would enclose the choir of those singing the praises of God in its midst, and by its two-fold support on either side would sustain the lofty apex of the central tower, rises at first simply with a low and massive vaulting; it then swells out with several staircases, skilfully ascending with many windings; then, with a plain wall, it runs up to the roof, which is of wood, carefully covered with lead.