Few periods, probably, in the world’s history have been marked by the construction of buildings more multitudinous and more vast. Their architecture, as Mr. Freeman remarks, “majestic and awful rather than beautiful, no style is more truly religious or more imbued with the spirit and position of the church” (and one may add of the State) “in its own day,” nor has any age “produced structures whose number, size, splendour, and richness bear more honourable testimony to the zeal and bounty of their founders.”
LECTURE XII.
The Transition.
Chapel of St. John, Tower of London—St. Alban’s Abbey—St. Stephen’s at Caen—Cathedrals of Winchester, Ely, London, Rochester, and Norwich—Abbey Church at Bury St. Edmund’s—Gloucester Cathedral—Tewkesbury Abbey—Cathedrals of Worcester and Durham—Waltham Abbey—Christchurch, Hants.
HAVING now given a general outline of the intrinsic principles of Norman architecture, I will proceed to offer a few brief descriptions of some of its earlier creations, or rather of a selection of such of them as have come down to our own day, or of which we have sufficient information to make the consideration of them profitable.
Fig. 242.—St. John’s Chapel, Tower of London.
I have already spoken at some length of Lanfranc’s Cathedral at Canterbury, and of its identity, in general design, with the Conqueror’s Abbey Church of St. Etienne, at Caen. I shall have to revert to this cathedral more than once in describing additions and alterations of later date; but there are no remains of Lanfranc’s original work of sufficient importance to warrant me in occupying your time upon it.
