Can these novelties have come into use before the Conquest? If so, we must presuppose a growing acquaintance with building methods as pursued in Normandy. This is not improbable. Norman influence was felt in English life during the reign of Edward the Confessor,[44] and imitations of Norman, as at an earlier date of German, technique are not beyond reasonable imagination. But it must be acknowledged that, while we are fain to discover the germ of Anglo-Norman art in these simple monuments, the constructive, purely architectural quality, which is the essence of that art as manifested at Durham or in the west front of Lincoln, is totally absent from them. That essential quality is not a home growth, but a foreign importation. The chief element of structural transition in these towers is to be found in their growing spaciousness. Areas which are on an average oblongs of some 10 feet 5 inches long by 10 feet 8 inches broad grow at Caistor to 15½ by 17½ feet, and at Harpswell to about 15 by 16 feet. With the growth of the area the wall thickens, thus affording a contrast to towers like Hough, where the large area is enclosed by thin walls. The eastern wall of the tower at Alkborough is less than 2½ feet thick; the average thickness of such walls is about 3 feet 7 inches. At Caistor the wall is 5¾ feet thick. One cannot fail to recognise that the slender tower of Saxon type, while keeping its unbuttressed character and its “mid-wall” arches, is spreading out into the ordinary broad and heavy Norman tower.
In the capitals of the mid-wall shafts a decided step is being taken in the same direction. The plain “cubical” type may be regarded as following a course of natural development at home which found conspicuous perfection in the architecture of the Norman period. But in other examples, and those fairly numerous, the end aimed at is clearly that reminiscence of the Corinthian capital which is familiar to those who have visited the abbey churches at Caen, with its upper volutes and its lower band of acanthus. The best examples of this are at Scartho and at St. Peter-at-Gowts, where the effort, if somewhat crude, is still to some extent achieved. The effort is again seen in the capitals at Great Hale, in which the general outline is that of the “cubical” cap, with volutes carved on the flat upper part, and the carved under surface reeded so as to give a suggestion of the band of acanthus. At Bracebridge, again, in capitals of the “cubical” type, volutes and rather unusual forms of conventional foliage appear; and in other cases, as at Glentworth, the volute is used without much skill, but with some variety of design. The unfinished form in which the sculpture is sometimes left suggests forcibly that it was added after the capitals were in position. Indeed, if this were not the case, defenders of the pre-Conquest date of these towers would have to give up their position altogether. Unless we imagine that English artists used their memories to reproduce classical capitals which few of them are likely to have seen, we cannot imagine these capitals coming into existence otherwise than under Norman influence, and Norman influence after the Conquest. The most successful imitations of early Norman capitals are at Harpswell, where, as we have observed, the measurements of the tower are of a Norman and not of a Saxon type. At Caistor, unfortunately, the original belfry windows are gone, so that we cannot form any judgment as to the character of their capitals.
St. Margaret’s Church Tower, Marton (before Restoration).
When any attempt, then, is made to demonstrate the transitional character of these towers, to form them into a link between Saxon and Norman work, we may acknowledge at once that they have an abiding influence on the plan of the parish church. Were it not for the tradition handed down from the Saxon period, the towers of Boston, Grantham, Louth, or Heckington might be in all kinds of different situations with regard to their respective churches. But of influence upon Anglo-Norman construction, upon architecture properly speaking, they had none. There is no seed in them of that marvellous development of stone vaulting which, under Norman hands in England, was to set in motion the full artistic energy of the Middle Ages. If, again, we look at the lesser matter of architectural detail, we must confess that the appearance of detail of a semi-Norman kind in them shows little capacity for shaping foreign ornament and adapting it to individual ends. All that we see is inaccurate copying. The life, the independence of thought and aim, the power of adaptation, the force of structural genius, which characterise the works of a transitional period, are all to seek. Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, on which men enlightened by contact with Norman art cannot have been slow to comment, the survival of the Saxon type of tower in Lincolnshire till quite late in the Norman period is a remarkable fact. The tower of Branston Church is of the traditional Saxon form and of much the usual Saxon proportions. The arcades in its western face on either side of the main entrance have unmoulded arches flush with the rubble surface of the tower, small shafts standing on high plinths of ashlar work which form the surface of the lowest five or six feet of the wall, and double cushion-caps, such as occur in more than one Lincolnshire tower. So far the workman does not commit himself as to the date of his work: its character is not inconceivably that which a mason more skilled than usual might have given to his work before the Conquest. But the high archway of the intervening entrance, with its edge-roll, its lesser mouldings, and its hood, its jamb-shafts with their voluted capitals, is unmistakably a copy—rough, but not inaccurate—of the lesser archways which flank the western doorways of the Norman west front at Lincoln, and occur again on the returned sides of the Norman wall. This doorway is no insertion: it is the builder’s chosen enrichment to his tower. No one will presume to argue that Rémi’s masons at Lincoln went for the model of their archways to a clever piece of work which some local artist had achieved at a small local church; and, this argument apart, the earliest date for the tower at Branston must be about 1092. Possibly after this date few towers of such slender and pronounced Saxon proportions were built in Lincolnshire, but the old form persisted. The western tower of Boothby Pagnell cannot, in its present condition, have been built before 1150: it is probably some years later. Like Caistor and Harpswell, it is broad in dimensions, and the walls are thick; but it keeps the unbuttressed form, and the window with mid-wall shaft. This late survival of a type of building which has impressed its features but little on subsequent forms of architecture testifies to its close association with the life of the county, and to the reluctance of the masons to abandon a feature which was a familiar sign of the religious activity of the countryside.
KIRKSTEAD CHAPEL
By C. Hodgson Fowler, F.S.A.
Within a few hundred yards of the line of the outside wall of the once-important Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead, founded in 1139, stands an extremely beautiful chapel of the purest Early English work, the special use of which is not known, but which was probably for the use of pilgrims to the Abbey and was probably served from it.
It now stands solitary and desolate, greatly out of repair, with its north and south walls much out of the perpendicular, and its vaulting consequently twisted and its beautiful lines disturbed.