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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The circumstances of the various portions of the British Isles differed in those early times so much one from another, that it is difficult to view them at all systematically. South Britain, early overspread with Roman art, civilised and Christianised, while Scotland and Ireland were yet barbarous and Pagan, became again, in its turn, both Pagan and barbarous when Ireland and Scotland had received the light of Christianity and civilisation.

Early in the fifth century these blessings had been conveyed to Ireland from then Christian Britain, and in the next century South Britain was sunk in almost impenetrable darkness, and was subsequently beholden to Ireland and the Irish race dwelling in Scotland, on the one side, and to missionaries from Rome on the other, for rekindling the extinguished lamp of religion and knowledge.

Of all the churches which must have existed in what is now England when inhabited by the old Britons, I am not sure that we possess a single relic; nor is there any certainty that even in Wales or Cornwall, where they were comparatively undisturbed, the case is much better. More curious still is the scarcity of early buildings in Scotland; though I shall be able to show you that some exceptions exist. Bede speaks of timber building as the “Mos Scotorum” and of stone building as “Mos Britonibus insolitus,” which may account for this dearth of objects of high antiquity. However this may be, we have to look mainly to Ireland for relics of the early modes of building among the British races; and here we happily find much to gratify our curiosity.

It was early in the fifth century that Patricius or St. Patrick (who describes himself as at once a Briton and a Roman), went from the northern parts of Roman Britain to instruct the then Pagan Irish, or, as they were more generally called, Scots. It was about the time when the invasion of Alaric had compelled the Emperor Honorius to withdraw his legions from Britain; and was, consequently, at the precise moment when our country was about to pass from the age of Roman subjection into that of mythic confusion,—beginning with the frightful devastations of the Picts and Scots, and subsequently of the Saxons; passing on through the semi-fabulous days of Vortigern, King Arthur, and Merlin, and ending with the flight of Cadwallader from desolated Britain; the driving out of the ancient inhabitants; the destruction of Christian churches and Roman cities, and the re-establishment of Paganism.

As there seems good reason to believe that, among the existing remains in Ireland, some are actually of the age of St. Patrick, it follows that in them we possess remains two centuries earlier than any left us by our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and that their type may be founded on that of the lost British buildings, though no doubt far humbler in scale and mode of building than those erected in South Britain with Roman aid. The Early Irish remains are mainly of three classes: the cells and other domestic buildings of the monks: the oratories and churches; and the round towers. The former class are of the rudest and most ascetic description, and seem to be founded on the customary dwellings of the Pagan inhabitants. The monks evidently eschewed all pretensions to personal comfort, and took up at once with the scale of dwelling common among their flock. They lived in stone huts, built without mortar, and vaulted over; more like ovens than human habitations, and so small as only to be sufficient for one person. With these they surrounded their churches, adding a few buildings, similar in character but somewhat larger, for more general purposes. Some, even of their oratories, were almost as pristine in their construction; and the churches themselves, though less rude, were of the most severe simplicity.

The form of dwelling indicated by the Cells or “Kills” which I have alluded to is not wholly alien to that still existing (or at least in use at the commencement of the present century) in the distant island of St. Kilda, excepting that the cells were for one person while the St. Kilda houses are for a family. Dr. Edward Daniel Clark thus describes these houses in 1797:—“The construction of their dwelling-houses differs from that of all the western islands. They consist of a pile of stones without cement, raised about 3 feet or 4 feet from the ground, forming a small oblong enclosure, over which is raised a covering of straw, bound together with transverse ropes of bent.... Round the walls of their huts are one or more arched apertures, according to the number of the family, leading to a vault, like an oven, arched with stone, and defended strongly from the inclemency of the weather; in this they sleep. I crawled on all-fours, with a lamp, into one of these, and found the bottom covered with heath; in this, I was informed, four persons slept. There is not sufficient space in them for a tall man to sit upright, though the dimensions of these vaulted dormitories varied in each hut, according to the number it was required to contain, or the industry of the owners.”

The central apartment he describes as without either chimney or window, but with two holes, some 7 inches square, to let out a little of the peat smoke.

There exists in the greater island of Arran, in the Bay of Galway, among many primæval antiquities, a house ([Fig. 193]), supposed to be of the Pagan period, which is thus described by Mr. Petrie, in his admirable work on the Ancient Architecture of Ireland:—“It is in its internal measurement 19 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches broad, and 8 feet high, and its walls are about 4 feet thick. Its doorway is but 3 feet high, and 2 feet 6 inches wide on the outside, but narrows to 2 feet on the inside. The roof is formed, as in all buildings of this class, by a gradual approximation of stones laid horizontally, till it is closed at the top by a single stone; and two apertures in the centre served the double purpose of a window and a chimney.”