“In Saxon strength that abbey frown’d,
With massive arches broad and round
That rose alternate row on row,
On ponderous columns short and low,
Built ere the art was known,
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk,
The arcades of an alley’d walk,
To emulate in stone.”
The latter part of the stanza is a complimentary allusion to the fanciful theory of Sir James Hall concerning the origin of the pointed arch. The application of the term Saxon, it would be impossible to verify or substantiate.
There are no buildings in this country with the characteristic forms of this church, or the distribution into nave and aisles, that belong to so early a period. A few rude structures there certainly are which may have been erected by Saxon architects, one of which occurs in our own district—the tower of Whittingham Church, Northumberland—characterised by a peculiar sort of quoining—consisting of long and short stones, placed alternately over each other—small round-headed apertures divided by a rude balastre, and the absence of buttresses. The term Norman may be safely used, if it be understood simply to designate a style which appeared in this country at the conquest, and prevailed for 125 years, during the Norman rule; but it is in reality Roman, and was derived from the imperial city by the architects who diffused it over Europe, with the religion to which these structures were consecrated. It flourished during the first thousand years of the Christian era, with long interruptions during the dark ages, but its rudiments maybe discerned at this day in the Temple of Peace at Rome, erected during the first century, and in the Halls of the Baths—those colossal structures in which the grandeur of thought and magnificent aims of the Roman people are most conspicuously combined. In these edifices we perceive the general arrangement of our Norman and Gothic churches—a wide central space arched over at top, with the vaults resting on pillars corresponding to our nave; between these pillars lofty arches open into as many vaulted apartments on either side intercommunicating by similar archways and constituting side-aisles. The roof of the side-aisles being considerably lower than that of the central vault, admits the insertion of lights in the main wall looking into the cave, which correspond with our clerestory windows.