Fig. 245.—St. John’s Chapel, Tower of London. Capital.
The two last Anglo-Saxon abbots having determined on its reconstruction, had incurred great labour in excavating among the ruins of the adjacent Roman city of Verulam to procure materials for the work; but a dreadful famine, followed by the Norman invasion, had prevented the realisation of their intentions.
Fig. 246. | Fig. 247. | |
St. John’s Chapel, Tower of London. Capitals. | ||
In the year 1077 Paul, a monk of St. Stephen’s, at Caen, and a relative of Lanfranc, was appointed to the abbacy; and, during the first eleven years of his tenure of office, he had “constructed the entire church” “of the stones and tiles from the ancient city of Verulam.” I presume, however, that this statement of Matthew Paris must be taken with some abatement, as we do not find the dedication to have taken place till 1115.
The church thus erected, though homely in material and of simple workmanship, was stupendous in its scale and prodigiously massive in its construction.
