Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

At Barton and Broughton, and possibly at Hough, we are face to face with a small compact plan—at Barton definitely centralised in the tower-space, at Broughton without the same centralisation, but with the main body of the church still gathered beneath the tower. In these cases, when we speak of the tower and the tower-space, we must regard the tower simply as an upward continuation of the body of the church. The congregation has not found shelter on the ground-floor of a tower: the tower is the upper storey or storeys of their church. However, in the two further instances of towers not western which Lincolnshire affords us, the tower-space must probably be regarded as a feature in the plan distinct from the main body of the building; it is not a church on which a tower has risen, but a space which is there because a tower forms a definite part of the design. Waith Church, a few miles south of Grimsby, is for the most part a modern Gothic building, with an entirely modern plan.[34] But between the chancel and nave, and flanked by a south transept, rises a tower of a type very familiar to travellers in Lincolnshire, but here alone seen in a central position. Its position must always, however, have been between eastern and western out-buildings; for its eastern and western walls are pierced by low arches of equal height and width, very different in proportion from the ordinary western doorway and tower arch. There seems to have been no entrance in either of the side walls. In all probability, then, we have here, not a definitely centralised plan, but a tower-space intervening between a nave and chancel. Of the relative dimensions of these to the tower-space it is impossible to speak: we have no remains to guide us. Again, this tower may have been simply an elevation of the eastern portions of the nave walls, as in those cases to which the term “axial” has been given; or, as in some Norman churches, it may have projected north and south of the adjacent nave and chancel. In the last case, we should have the ground-plan of Barton-on-Humber, with its centralised character probably destroyed by the elongation of its western annexe. The nave and the tower-space become independent divisions of the plan.

St. Mary’s Church, Stow, looking East.

The Saxon church of Stow survives only in part; and to assert that the present fabric, which is largely of the later part of the eleventh and the earlier part of the twelfth century, is a rebuilding of the older church on its original scale, would be to assert what we do not know. However, the church was planned on a scale somewhat more imposing than was usual in Saxon times; and enough of the older work is left in the transepts to assure us that they, at any rate, covered their present site from the date of its foundation. Their length and general proportions postulate a nave to match; and we may assume, without much doubt, that the present Norman nave rose upon Saxon foundations. The chancel may have been enlarged to its present dimensions by Norman builders; this is, at least, more likely than that the Saxon chancel was equally spacious. The visitor to Stow about the time of the Conquest would have seen nave, chancel, and transepts, as indeed the visitor to-day may see them, grouped round a central tower, which rose straight from the ground in their midst, independent of their buttressing aid. The quoins of the tower go down to the ground; the arches which connect the tower-space and the adjacent arms of the building are, as it were, piercings in the tower walls rather than the actual substructure on which the tower walls rested.[35] The tower-space at Stow is thus in some measure a central area, the focus of the plan; and a vivid imagination might conjure up in this instance the Barton-on-Humber plan reproduced on a larger scale, and converted into a Greek cross by the addition of transepts. But it is more probable that here, as at Waith, the tower-space is shifted slightly to one side of the centre of the plan, and, while keeping much of its dignity in the general scheme, is no longer the main body of the building.

In most English churches the most convenient plan from the earliest times has been the oblong nave and practically square chancel, divided by an arch which, to our modern ideas, has sometimes been inconveniently narrow, but without the intervening tower-space, which became in so many later churches an obstruction to the unity of worship in chancel and nave. We have seen Lincolnshire builders experimenting with that new-found addition to the plan, the tower, packing their nave into its ground-floor, trying what can be done with a central area, abandoning—we speak of probabilities—the complete symmetry of the centralised plan, and finally wedging the tower in between the arms of the building, as an effective focus for the church as seen in elevation. The difficulties, the inconvenience, the uncertain conditions, of centralised or quasi-centralised planning, are now in most cases abandoned: the builders frankly remove their tower-space to the west end of their plan. Upon it rises a bell-tower, which may on occasion be used as a look-out tower in time of disturbance, or even—though this seems very doubtful—as a place of refuge for the inhabitants of the township. In most instances the tower-space will be entered by a western doorway, and will be the porch of the church, just as, at Brixworth or at Monkwearmouth, in other counties, the original porch has become the substructure of the tower. The porch will lead into the nave of the church, oblong and aisleless; and, in the east wall of the nave, an arch will give access to a small rectangular chancel. This is the normal Lincolnshire, and indeed the normal English plan; and this plan powerfully affects the architecture of the Norman and Gothic periods of English art. The centralised plan may survive in beautiful forms, and will always be the more interesting, owing to its greater capacity for variation; but the western tower of the Saxon period, and the elongated plan associated with it, will be the standard of planning congenial to the larger number of English masons.

It is unnecessary to particularise between the various churches of Saxon origin in Lincolnshire which have western towers. There are many, and the number may be stated rather variously. The present writer, excluding Hough and Broughton, which, as we have seen, may be treated more suitably with centralised plans, counts some thirty towers in part or wholly of the distinctively Saxon type.[36] Some of these, as he already has said, evidently were built at a date later than the Conquest. Of no one of them would he courageously assert, on the mere evidence of plan and details, that it was built actually and beyond doubt before the Conquest. But that they were built by the hands of Saxon workmen, and that they represent a definitely Saxon tradition, are hypotheses which, if they do not offer themselves to a very clear proof, may at any rate be enunciated as highly probable.

The consideration of the dimensions of these towers on plan may be left to the discussion of their relative dates, with which this chapter will conclude. Having noted variations of plan, we must now look at architectural details. Of those peculiarities of technique which are most readily recognised as Saxon, St. Peter’s, at Barton-on-Humber, is a nearly unique example in Lincolnshire, and its value is still higher, in that the upper stage of the tower presents features of a rather different kind, more typical of Lincolnshire, but less specially and exclusively Saxon than those of the lower stages. The tower is divided by two string-courses into three stages, the middle stage low and squat, the lowest stage much the tallest of the three, and subdivided into two parts, an upper and lower, by external decorative arcading. This subdivided stage represents the body of the church; the middle stage probably represents the original bell-chamber; and both these stages, together with the small western annexe, have definite “long-and-short” quoining. The “short” stones, as usual, back into the rubble-work, of which the tower is built; but their protruding faces are cut away flush with the rubble, and are hidden beneath the plaster which covers the whole surface of the tower. The decorative arcading, however, already alluded to, is formed by irregular strips of dressed stone projecting from the surface, the heads of which, formed by small horizontal impost-blocks, are connected in the lower stage by semicircular strips. On the crown of each of these rude arches rests the foot of one of the upright strips of the upper stage, which are connected similarly by strips of triangular form, the apices of which touch the under side of the string-course between the lower and the middle stage. The surface of the lower stage is thus cut up into two series of tall arcaded panels. The bottom part of one of the lower panels is pierced on the north and south sides of the tower by a doorway with rounded head. The upright, dividing two of the upper panels on each of these sides, is partly cut away to make room for a double window-opening with rounded heads, the opening being divided by a small piece of wall faced, at the level of the outer wall, with a baluster-shaft. These windows lighted the body of the church, the inner roof of which came at this point. The middle stage keeps the “long-and-short” quoining, but the strip-work has here given place to an unpanelled plastered surface, broken only by a double window-opening, similar in construction to that in the stage below, but with triangular instead of semicircular heads. Like the middle stage of the tower, the western annexe of the church has no strip-work on its walls, but has “long-and-short” work at its angles. It is lighted by a semicircular-headed opening in each of the north and south walls, and in the west wall by two circular openings set one above the other. All these openings are splayed outwards as well as inwards. The eastern wall of the tower can be seen from the inside of the present church, with its “long-and-short” quoining perfect to the ground, and with breaks in the masonry where the eastern annexe originally joined it. The arch which pierces it on the ground-floor—the chancel arch of the Saxon church—is very plainly treated with dressed jambs, impost-blocks, and voussoirs, but without any moulding. In the wall above is a single opening of considerable width, with rounded head, rather massive jamb-stones, and thin, flat impost-blocks. Above this comes the double opening of the belfry stage, which would have stood clear of the roof of the Saxon chancel.[37]

Turning from these features of the original church walls, its western annexe, and its belfry stage, to the uppermost stage of the tower, we are met by a striking difference. We already have seen the strip-work of the lowest stage disappear. Here the “long-and-short” work is gone as well, and the quoining is of small oblong stones set on one another at right angles, so that each of the adjacent faces of the wall is in bond with every other of the quoins. The window-openings are still double, and have rounded heads, but they are taller than those below, and are divided, not by slabs of wall with baluster facings, but by slender rounded shafts set in the middle of the thickness of the wall, with heads corbelled out so as to form rude capitals, and to support through-stone impost-blocks, corresponding to those at the head of the jambs on either side. Of the absence of splay, inner or outer, to the openings we can say nothing; the double splay has occurred only in the western annexe. But the disappearance of “long-and-short” work, that most unmistakable of purely Saxon details, and the introduction of a new type of double opening, are significant of a change of style which has come over the Saxon building art since the church and tower began to rise.

Thus, at Barton-on-Humber, we have two different types of Saxon work—that very peculiar form, with its tendency to panel decoration with strip-framing, which produces its highest decorative effect at Earl’s Barton, side by side with a more staid, less fantastic manner of building, which is without architectural ambition, uses decoration very sparingly, but can achieve very pleasant effects of proportion within its modest limits. This second style, as it may be called, is emphatically the style favoured by Lincolnshire builders. Of the first style, Barton-on-Humber is the only really conspicuous example in the county.[38] Strip-work decorations, not uncommon in the Saxon work of the South Midlands and South of England, of Mercia and Wessex, is quite the exception within the belt of Danish influence. It appears here and there as a kind of frame to arches and their jambs, or to the heads of window-openings. The best examples of its use in this connection anywhere in England are to be found in the jambs of the noble tower arches at Stow, where a semicircular shaft is carried down the face of the wall close to the angle of the jambs, and is accompanied by a flat strip of stone at a few inches distance. Both shaft and strip are finished off by rough corbels a little above the floor level.[39] But Stow is an exceptional church. As a rule, we find the strip-frame retained purely as a flat hood-mould to doorways and windows, without a trace of that individuality of style which distinguishes it at Stow, and preserving a still more distant kinship to the work at Barton.