Fig. 254.—St. Alban’s Abbey. Balusters.
In the transept, however, the triforium is differently designed, being subdivided into coupled arches, and supported by stone shafts. Many of these shafts are balusters (most likely of Offa’s church) made use of again, with the addition of a Norman capital and base, and sometimes eked out in length by the interposition of Roman tiles ([Fig. 254]). Like the balusters I have had the opportunity of examining at Dover and at Jarrow,[26] they bear evident marks of having been turned in a lathe.
The outer wall of the gallery storey has been removed, but of its former existence there is distinct evidence; the mark of the roof, as seen against the transepts, showing that the aisle walls have been lowered by some 8 or 9 feet. Only three bays of the aisles retain their vaulting, which is of the most typical form of groining. It is capable of almost certain proof that the roofs were throughout devoid of parapets. The transept fronts were divided up the middle by a wide pilaster buttress, and flanked by similar ones. Their windows, as nearly all others, are of the greatest simplicity; three recessed orders in jambs and arches alike, with imposts to the two outer ones: above the springing line, however, of the gables, were ranges of double windows divided by stone shafts. Each transept has a staircase in its western angle which runs up into an ornamental round turret, with four double windows in its upper stage, and was most likely crowned with a cone. These staircases led into the triforium passages and into the roof.
Fig. 255.—Belfry Stage of Tower, St. Alban’s.
The tower has three stages above the ridges of the roofs. The lower one has plain windows lighting the lantern; the second has, on each side, two pairs of double windows; and the upper storey has two such windows of large scale. The tower is flanked with pilaster buttresses merging in the upper storey into round turrets.
I will next take Winchester Cathedral. York would have claimed precedence as a metropolitan church, but its Norman remains are so small in extent as to neutralise its claims. I may mention, however, that Professor Willis (whose marvellous perception of antiquarian evidence enables him to describe, almost with precision, buildings of which the common observer would conclude that no relic or evidence exists) has shown us that the Norman cathedral at York (begun soon after 1070), was a structure of prodigious magnitude, and exceeded in the width of its nave any church in England; measuring 50 feet from centre to centre of its piers.
Winchester may be said, in these early days, to have rivalled London as the capital of England; for it had been the capital of that Saxon kingdom which brought all the others into subjection, and whose kings became kings of England; while London—the capital only of Essex, a kingdom subordinate to Kent—owed its greatness simply to its river.
We have already seen that the cathedral, founded by Birinus in the seventh century, had been rebuilt by Athelwold and Elphege in the tenth century.