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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

“Now he laid the foundations of the church with large square blocks of grey stone; its foundations were deep; the front towards the east he makes round; the stones are very strong and hard; in the centre rises a tower, and two at the west front, and fine and large bells he hangs there. The pillars and entablatures are rich without and within, at the bases and capitals; the work rises grand and royal; sculptured are the stones and storied the windows; and when he finished the work, with lead the church completely he covers. He makes there a cloister, a chapter-house in front towards the east, vaulted and round, ... refectory, dormitory, and offices, in due order.”

This description adds to what I have before stated, that there were two western towers, though these were not really erected till later, but were, nevertheless, in all probability a part of the first design. It tells us also of the monastic buildings.

Of the scale of this first Anglo-Norman church we have some indirect means of judging. In the first place, it is unlikely that a church of royal foundation, built in juxtaposition with the palace, and intended as the burial-place of its founder, built also in substitution for a pilgrimage which he had vowed to make, should be other than of similar scale to the great churches erected at the time in the country whence he borrowed his architecture. In confirmation of this we have several evidences, not necessary here to state, that it differed but little in scale from the present church; indeed, had it been otherwise, the succeeding historians would hardly have spoken of it in the terms which they make use of.

As to its architectural character, we have little to guide us. We have the extensive substructure of the dormitory and the lower part of the refectory. From these we find that the offices were of the plainest variety of Norman; indeed, the pillars of the first-named structure are of the very extreme of massive simplicity, and the shafts of the refectory arcading have cushion capitals of the most normal type.

We have recently discovered, beneath the pavement of the altar space, the bases of two of the great piers of the Sanctuary: from which we find that they were clustered, not unlike those at St. Stephen’s at Caen. The bases consist of a double hollow, precisely like one from that church. The work is by no means so rough as that common in early Norman buildings; a circumstance which I have noticed in several pre-conquestal works.

Having noticed this one building in which Norman architecture was used in England before the Conquest, I will mention one or two instances of Anglo-Saxon architecture being used subsequently to that event.

I refer especially to two churches (St. Mary’s and St. Peter’s, at Gowts,) in the lower town of Lincoln. This portion of the city did not exist till after the Conquest; when, owing to the expulsion of many of the inhabitants of the old, or upper, city to make way for the Norman Castle and Cathedral, they were obliged to build below the hill, where they founded these two churches; building them in their own old English manner, while the castle and minster were being erected by the Normans in conformity with their own taste above. There are a number of towers between Lincoln and the Humber which correspond so closely in style with these as to lead one to assign to them the same date. Nothing can more manifestly prove the distinctness of the two styles than that the most marked church of the period was built by the Norman-loving Anglo-Saxon king in Norman architecture before the Conquest, and that old-fashioned English people still built in the Anglo-Saxon manner in the days of the Norman Conqueror.

It is time now that we should consider what were the distinguishing characteristics of the Norman style.

According to Mr. Petit and Mr. Fergusson, the Norman is rather an early stage of Gothic than strictly Romanesque; and, though this may be said to be rather a question of nomenclature than of distinctive principle, I am inclined to think there is much real truth in it. I would rather, however, put it thus: that, among the many branches of the great Romanesque tree, this was one,—as the Anglo-Saxon was not one,—of those which contained the intrinsic elements of the future Gothic style. I gave my reasons, in one of my earlier lectures[18] (while not desiring a change of nomenclature), for holding the completed round-arch style to be, in a certain sense, one with the earlier-pointed, and for rather favouring Mr. Fergusson’s custom of calling them respectively round-arched and pointed-arched Gothic. It is better, however, in an historical sketch, to view each phase on its own bearing, and not to judge of it by anticipation of its subsequent results.