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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

Fig. 198.—Teampull Caeunanach, Ireland.

The doorways are, however, sometimes arched. The apsidal termination is, I believe, wholly unknown in these churches; and it would appear from this fact that the square end of the majority of English chancels is a tradition from the ancient British churches: the apse, which so frequently made its appearance and was again so frequently removed, being a foreign importation, against which the national feeling rebelled, as if opposed to local tradition. Of a piece with this feeling was the indignant protest of a Scotchman against the intention of one St. Malachy to erect a church in an unaccustomed style. “Good man, what has induced you to introduce this novelty into these regions? we are Scots, not Gauls; why this levity? Was ever work so superfluous, so proud!” This feeling, rather than the poverty of the country, may have occasioned the rigid severity of these early churches in Ireland, the largest of which rarely exceeded 60 feet in length,—the very length prescribed by St. Patrick for one of his churches, and which Mr. Petrie thinks was his usual dimension for churches of the largest class. This was also the length of the original church at Glastonbury, probably the first erected in Great Britain, while it differs but slightly from that of the naves of Brixworth Church, Worth Church, and that on the Castlehill at Dover, three of our oldest remaining pre-Norman English churches.

The difficulty naturally arising from the limited size of the churches and the unlimited numbers of the monks, appears to have been met by multiplying the number of the former. Thus we find several—up to seven—churches continually forming a single group. Just as at Glastonbury, there were at one time three in immediate proximity, though subsequently united into one.

Besides the more or less numerous cells which surrounded the churches, or groups of churches, there were usually houses for the abbots, hardly less ascetic in their construction than the cells of the monks; halls for strangers, refectories, and kitchens. Of the abbots’ houses we have several remaining, especially those of St. Columba at Kells, and of St. Kelvin at Glendalough. These were single rooms, about 18 feet to 25 feet long, by 15 or 16 feet wide, vaulted and covered by a stone roof, with a window and a door of very small size, all perfectly plain, but skilfully constructed.

All such groups of buildings were surrounded by a high and thick wall of defence, with strong gateways, and somewhere at hand was often erected a round tower, at once the bell-tower of the monastery and the place of refuge in case of attack.

We know nothing of the internal arrangement of the churches, excepting that in some cases there is a stone bench across the east end, the altar standing a little in advance; a square version of the Basilican arrangement; for, be it remembered, the apse possibly only came into use when secular Basilicæ were converted into churches, while those under consideration were probably founded upon the traditions of churches which existed in Britain before the time of Constantine, so that our English square east-end may after all be the more primitive type, and if such were the case, it would appear that the seats of the clergy were at first along the eastern wall and behind the altar, as in the apsidal churches. To these views, however, I will not pledge myself, as we do not know how soon apses came into use.

This system, too, of erecting monasteries, not with general dormitories, but with numerous private cells, seems to have been founded on the early Eastern form, of which so many existed in the deserts of the Thebaid, and of which many ancient notices exist. The most perfect remaining specimen of this kind of monastery in Ireland is one on a most minute scale founded by St. Fechin, in the seventh century, in the almost inaccessible island of Ardoilen, off the coast of Connemara, which, excepting only that all its buildings are vaulted, agrees almost precisely with Bede’s description of that founded about the same time in the island of Farne, on the Northumbrian coast, by St. Cuthbert, himself a Scot or perhaps an Irishman. Those in the north of Ireland and in Scotland seem to have been usually of timber, “more Scotorum,” as Bede says, and have consequently perished; but in the south and west of Ireland they were of stone, and remain, in many instances, in a more or less complete state to our own day.

Some, however, in Scotland, were of stone, like those of Ireland.