CHAPTER II

THE CONVENTUAL CHURCH

§ 28. The precinct of a religious house was separated from the outer world by an enclosing wall or dyke, on the line of which a gatehouse gave admission to the outer court (_curia_). Here were placed various offices and storehouses, and such buildings as the almonry and guest-house, in which the monastery came into necessary contact with secular affairs. The church and cloister, devoted to the religious life, occupied approximately the middle of the precinct, the cloister and its surrounding buildings being generally placed on the south side of the nave of the church. At the east end of the church was the graveyard; while outside the cloister was a collection of buildings, sometimes arranged round a court or smaller cloister, of which the chief was the infirmary. In dealing with these divisions, the church and cloister, the centre of the daily life of the monastery, must be taken first. It is necessary to remember that while the relative position of _curia_, cloister and infirmary buildings was almost always the same, their actual position varied according to the site of the monastery. The natural place for the _curia_ was on the west side of the church and cloister, and in Cistercian monasteries, where the site was unencumbered by other buildings, it is usually found in this position. On the other hand, as at Durham and Worcester, where the site was longer from north to south than from east to west, the _curia_ was on the south side of the cloister. Again, where a monastery was founded on the north side of a town, as at Canterbury, Chester and Gloucester, it was convenient that the cloister should be on the north side of the church, where seclusion and quiet were possible. Occasionally, as at Tintern, where a river ran north of the abbey, the cloister was placed on that side for purposes of drainage; while in a few instances a river on the west side of the cloister was the cause of important variations in the plan of the buildings. In one exceptional case, at Rochester, the confined nature of the site led to the building of the cloister on the south side of the eastern arm of the church.

§ 29. The position of the chief buildings round the cloister was arranged upon a convenient principle, which commended itself to monks and canons alike. The chapter-house was always in the eastern range of buildings: the dormitory or dorter was nearly always on the first floor of the same range: the refectory or frater was always in the range opposite the church[6]. This was the usual Benedictine plan, and its dispositions, allowing for some variation, were followed by most of the religious orders. But the Cistercian order, while maintaining the relative position of the cloister buildings, developed a special type of church and plan of cloister, which were in no small degree the result of its peculiar constitution. Its claustral arrangements were peculiar to itself, but its church-plan had some effect upon the churches of other orders, particularly upon those of Premonstratensian canons. In considering the monastic church, it will be useful in the first place to take the main features of the Benedictine plan, and in the sequel, after noting the peculiarities of Cistercian churches, to observe the effect of both plans on the churches of other orders. In all monastic churches, however, the plan was governed by three common necessities. (1) A quire had to be provided for the recitation of the canonical hours by the convent. (2) A sufficient number of altars was necessary, so that brethren in holy orders might have frequent opportunities of celebrating mass. (3) Arrangements had to be made for processions, and especially for the procession before high mass on Sundays, which began and ended in the church and made the round of the claustral buildings.

§ 30. The result of these common requirements was the general prevalence of the cruciform plan in churches of monks and canons. The eastern arm contained the high altar and presbytery. The quire occupied the crossing of the transepts and one or more of the eastern bays of the nave. The transepts were provided with eastern chapels, and in the transept next the cloister direct access was given to the dorter by the night-stair, which was used by the convent in going to and returning from the night office of matins and lauds. The quire was separated from the rest of the nave by a stone screen with a loft above, known as the _pulpitum_, a bay west of which came another screen, the rood-screen. The nave usually had north and south aisles. In the aisle-wall next the cloister were two doorways, one opening into the east, the other into the west walk of the cloister. The Sunday procession left the church by the eastern doorway, which was also the entrance used by the convent for the day offices, and returned by the western. There was frequently a tower above the crossing, and the larger churches had additional towers at the west end of the aisles. Even Cistercian churches, in defiance of the statutes, succumbed in the later middle ages to the attractions of tower-building. A tower was built above the crossing at Kirkstall and at the west end of the nave at Furness. At Fountains, after a futile attempt to build above the crossing, the tower was added to the end of the north transept.

§ 31. The eastern arm of a Benedictine church was normally aisled. In the common plan of a Norman abbey church the presbytery ended in an apse, which contained the high altar, standing clear of the eastern wall, and projected a bay east of the ends of the aisles, which were internally apsidal but externally were finished off square. This plan was followed in Lanfranc's church at Canterbury, at Durham, Peterborough, Westminster and elsewhere, and was not confined to monastic churches. In England, however, a plan was sometimes followed which was unusual in Normandy, although it is common in Romanesque churches in other parts of France. The aisles in this case were continued round the apse, so as to form a processional path behind the altar; and out of this path opened three apsidal chapels, as at Gloucester and Norwich, or five, as in the Cluniac church of Lewes, where the plan was borrowed from the parent church of Cluny. This plan was of great convenience for processions and afforded room for at least one additional altar. It was adopted in the abbey church of St Augustine at Canterbury, and in the rebuilding of the eastern arm of the neighbouring cathedral priory. Gloucester, Norwich and Tewkesbury are examples of its use in Benedictine churches; and it occurs in the Augustinian priory church of St Bartholomew, Smithfield. In these cases the processional path was retained through all later alterations, and the original arrangement is still quite clear; while the alternative and at one time more common plan has generally disappeared in England, and Peterborough is the one large church in which there are substantial remains of it above the foundations. Although the influence of Cluny upon foreign Romanesque architecture was considerable, the English Cluniac churches had no distinct plan of their own. Castle Acre, for example, followed the ordinary Norman plan as seen at Durham and Peterborough; and later developments at Castle Acre and Wenlock were carried out on models common to churches of other orders.

§ 32. The presbytery or space west of the altar in churches of the Norman period varied in length from two bays to four. At its west end a step (_gradus presbyterii_) divided it from the quire, which, as already noted, occupied the length of the crossing and the eastern bay or bays of the nave. The quire was an oblong enclosure cut off from the nave, aisles and transepts by screens on three sides, against which the stalls of the convent were arranged. It had three doorways. The western entrance, in the middle of the _pulpitum_ or quire screen, was called the lower entry (_introitus inferior_). The upper entries (_introitus superiores_) or quire-doors (_ostia chori_) were lateral entrances in the screens next the transepts, on either side of the presbytery step, and were the way by which the convent came into quire. When the Sunday procession left the high altar, it passed out of the quire by the upper entry on the side furthest from the cloister, and returned, after making the circuit of the church and cloister-buildings, through the lower entry in the _pulpitum_. The stalls in the quire were occupied according to seniority. In an abbey church, the abbot sat against the western screen, on the south side of the lower entry, while the prior sat in the corresponding stall on the north. Where a prior was head of the house, he sat in the southern stall and the sub-prior in the northern. In the middle of the quire was the lectern, where, as at Durham, 'the Moncks did singe ther Legends at Mattins and other tymes.' On certain festivals, the epistle and gospel were chanted from the _pulpitum_ at the west end of the quire. In these general arrangements, allowing for the divergences in the ritual of the various orders, there was very little difference between the interior of a monastic quire and that of a church of secular canons. Where medieval stall-work remains, as at Winchester and Chester, or in the collegiate quires of Lincoln, Beverley, and Ripon, the similarity is at once apparent; but monastic quires were effectually isolated from the nave by the rood-screen west of the _pulpitum_, an arrangement which, though not unknown, was very rare in collegiate churches.

§ 33. On leaving the quire by one of the upper entries, the Sunday procession first visited the altars in the transept on that side, and, while the celebrant sprinkled each with holy water, anthems were sung by the convent. The transept-chapels varied in number. In the great abbey churches of the Norman period, as at Norwich, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, a single apsidal chapel projected from the east wall of either transept. In churches with short presbyteries, such chapels formed an effective group with the apse and its chapels. Thus at St Mary's, York, and St Albans, where the plan of the eastern apse without a processional path was followed, the apse, projecting beyond the rest of the church, was flanked on either side by a row of three chapels, of which two opened out of the transept; and of these two, the inner one, nearest the aisle, projected further east than the outer. At Durham, Ely and Peterborough, the transepts were provided with eastern aisles, divided by low screens or perpeyn walls into three chapels on either side. There were thus in the plan of these three churches, eight altars in the transepts and presbytery aisles: at St Mary's, York, and St Albans there were six: at Westminster four; while at Norwich, Gloucester and Tewkesbury, where there was a processional path round the high altar, there were five.

§ 34. The lengthening of the eastern limbs of monastic churches, of which an early example was the enlargement of Canterbury cathedral, completed in 1130, provided additional chapels and a clear course for the procession at the back of the high altar. At Canterbury, the new eastern limb was as long as the nave and crossing together: the quire was moved into its western part, and additional transepts, each containing two chapels, were thrown out on either side of the new presbytery, while three chapels opened out of the processional path which encircled the apse. In this plan the night-entry was a doorway in the eastern transept. In the second rebuilding, some fifty years later, the plan was lengthened further to include a chapel for the shrine of St Thomas between the high altar and the ambulatory. Although in several cases, with the lengthening of the eastern limb, the quire was transferred to a position east of the transepts, this alteration was by no means general. In the thirteenth century rebuilding at Westminster, the high altar, presbytery and quire remained in their old places, and the additional space in the new apse was devoted to the chapel and shrine of St Edward. The plans of Canterbury and Westminster were both elaborate versions of the Norwich and Gloucester plan. But, while this type of plan prevailed in the great churches of France, the plan which was preferred in England from the beginning of the thirteenth century onward was a long rectangular eastern limb. At Winchester and St Albans, the longest of our great churches, the quire did not extend east of the transepts, and the presbytery and high altar occupied their relative positions as in the older plan. Behind the screen or reredos of the high altar a bay was screened off as a feretory or shrine for the local saint. At this point the high roof of the church ceased, and the roof of the eastward extension was on a level with that of the aisles, which were thus returned to afford a processional path at the back of the feretory. On the east side of the processional path were chapels enclosed by screens, while a long aisleless Lady chapel was built out from the centre of the east wall. At Chester the eastern chapel, which contained St Werburgh's shrine, is directly at the back of the high altar, and no space was left for a processional path: this was remedied to some extent in the fifteenth century by prolonging the north aisle eastwards and so affording a lateral entrance to the chapel. In the east and north of England, as at Ely and Selby, it was customary to continue the high roof to the extreme east end of the church, and to prolong the aisles to the same length on either side, so that externally the ambulatory and eastern chapels are not definitely expressed. In such cases a row of altars, divided by screens or perpeyn walls, stood side by side against the east wall. These alternative plans were not peculiar to the religious orders, and the second plan was freely used in the larger Yorkshire churches, by secular canons at York and Ripon, by Benedictines at Selby, Whitby and St Mary's, York, by Cistercians at Jervaulx and Rievaulx, and by Augustinian canons at Guisbrough and Kirkham.

§ 35. The Sunday procession, after making stations at each of the eastern chapels in turn, came down the aisle into the transept next the cloister, and, having visited the altars there, passed into the cloister through the eastern processional doorway in the nave. It returned through the western processional doorway. If, as at Durham, there was a chapel at the west end of the church, the procession would enter it by the doorway at the end of one aisle, and leave it by the other. The western chapel at Durham, as at Glastonbury, was the Lady chapel. It was known at Durham as the Galilee because the celebrant, entering it in front of the convent at the end of the procession on Sunday, the feast of the Resurrection, symbolised our Lord going before His disciples into Galilee. The name Galilee was also applied, as at Ely, or in the Cistercian churches of Byland and Fountains, to porches in front of the western doorway of a church. The final station of the procession was in the middle of the nave before the rood-screen. Here the convent stood in two long rows, the position of each member being regulated by stones inserted in the floor of the nave at equal intervals: such stones still remain beneath the grass at Fountains, and are known to have existed elsewhere. Meanwhile, the celebrant sprinkled the chief nave altar, which stood against the middle of the screen, and was at Durham enclosed at the sides and in front by wooden screens, which formed a chapel or 'porch.' On either side of the altar was a doorway through the screen, above which was the great rood or crucifix, with a figure of St Mary on one side and St John on the other: at Durham there were also figures of archangels. The rood-screen was flanked by screens across the aisles, so that the western part of the nave was entirely shut off from the quire and from the eastern processional doorway. The eastern part of the south aisle at Durham was screened off as a chantry chapel, and there were also two enclosed chapels further west, beneath opposite arches of the nave, one of which was visited on the way to the Galilee, and the other in returning. There was frequently, as at St Albans, a row of chapels beneath the arches, while in some cases, as at Ely and Peterborough, where the nave projected some distance west of the cloister, more altars were provided in a transept at the west end. After the station at the rood altar and its neighbouring chapels had been concluded, the convent passed through the two doorways in the rood-screen, and, reuniting in the bay beyond, entered the quire through the doorway in the middle of the _pulpitum_. In many churches, as at Norwich, the _pulpitum_ was formed by two parallel stone screens carrying the loft and occupying a bay of the nave. At Malmesbury it enclosed the bay west of the crossing, and its eastern screen is the reredos of the present parish altar. At Durham and Canterbury, where the quire was east of the crossing, the _pulpitum_ was between the eastern piers, the rood-screen between the western. At Canterbury the eastern processional doorway was in the west wall of the transept next the cloister. At Durham it is in the usual position, but covered by a vestibule formed by placing the screen at the end of the south aisle one bay west of the rood-screen. The rood-screens at Croyland and at Tynemouth priory still remain among the ruins. At St Albans the _pulpitum_ is gone, but the stone rood-screen remains; while at Blyth priory the place of the rood-screen was taken by a wall the whole height of the nave.

§ 36. Lay-folk were permitted to enter the naves of monastic churches; and, even in Cistercian churches, where the whole building was strictly devoted to the uses of the monastery, doorways are sometimes found, as at Kirkstall, which may have been made for this purpose. In a large number of Benedictine and Augustinian churches, though by no means in the majority, an altar in the nave was appropriated to parochial services, and was served by a secular vicar or a curate appointed by the convent. The lay-folk entered the church by a doorway in the aisle opposite the cloister: the great western doorway was used only on special occasions, as in the procession on Palm Sunday or at an episcopal visitation. Sometimes, as at Blyth and Leominster, a special addition of an aisle or a second nave and aisle was made to the original nave, for the sake of parochial services. Such services, however, frequently interfered with the monastic offices, especially if the convent was singing one thing and the parishioners another. At Wymondham in Norfolk a dispute about the use of the bells by the parish led to a serious quarrel in the fifteenth century. The parishioners fastened up the rood-screen doors and appropriated the nave, and the dispute was healed only by the building of a separate bell-tower for the parish at the west end of the church. The monks of Rochester and the canons of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, built churches within their outer precincts for the parishioners whose services interfered with their own. This arrangement, like that by which the pairs of parish churches at Coventry, Evesham and Bury St Edmunds were distinct from the monastery churches hard by, put an end to such constant wrangling as occurred between monks and lay-folk over the use of the south transept at Chester.

§ 37. Cistercian churches developed a special plan of their own in keeping with the austere ideals of their order. Some of their earliest churches, as at Waverley and Tintern, had aisleless naves, short transepts, each with one rectangular chapel upon its eastern side and an aisleless rectangular presbytery. This is a simple form of the normal Cistercian plan, which may be seen to perfection at Kirkstall and Buildwas, and was preserved with some modifications in a late rebuilding at Furness. The presbytery, aisleless and rectangular, projected some two bays east of the crossing, the high altar being placed slightly in advance of the east wall. The western bay of the presbytery was covered on either side by two or three rectangular chapels ranged along the east side of the transepts, divided from each other by solid walling, but with a continuous eastern wall. The nave was aisled. The quire was in the usual position, in the crossing and the eastern bays of the nave, and was enclosed on north and south by stone walls which were built flush with the inner faces of the columns and across the length of the crossing. The lower entry of the quire was, as usual, in the middle of the _pulpitum_: the upper entries were doors in the side-walls close to the presbytery.

§ 38. Such a plan obviously gave little scope for processions, while the number of altars was limited by the aisleless presbytery. While some churches, such as Buildwas and Kirkstall, kept their early plan without alteration, and while thirteenth-century churches such as those of Sweetheart abbey in Kirkcudbrightshire and Valle Crucis in Wales were built on the traditional plan, others were rebuilt with aisled presbyteries and ranges of eastern chapels. In two instances, at Croxden and in the extension of Hayles made in 1271-7, the ordinary French Gothic plan of an apse with a processional path and apsidal eastern chapels was adopted. Special Cistercian models, however, were provided by the rebuildings at Clairvaux (1174) and Cîteaux (1193). At Clairvaux an apse took the place of the rectangular presbytery: the east walls of the chapels next the presbytery were removed, and these chapels were continued round the apse as a processional path, out of which opened a series of chapels, one from each bay, divided by walls and covered by a common lean-to roof. The plan of Cîteaux was simply a rectangular version of that of Clairvaux: the presbytery was aisled, the aisles were returned across the east end, and all three sides surrounded by similar chapels walled off from each other. Of the Clairvaux plan the only known example in England is the thirteenth-century church of Beaulieu. The Cîteaux plan in a modified form was more general. It is well seen at Dore, where there are no chapels opening from the north and south aisles, but the processional path has an eastern aisle containing five chapels, originally divided from one another by perpeyn walls. This plan was followed in the earlier church at Hayles (1249-51), before the eastern arm was extended to include the chapel of the Holy Blood. In some churches, as at Byland and Waverley, the processional path was provided by moving the high altar a bay west of the main east wall, and placing the chapels in the returned aisle, instead of building a special aisle for them beyond. On the other hand, the eastern limbs at Jervaulx, Rievaulx, Tintern, and elsewhere were rebuilt in the thirteenth century upon the ordinary aisled rectangular plan. The high altar was placed two bays west of the east end: the processional path was in the bay between it and the eastern chapels, which were ranged against the east wall. The presbyteries in these churches were usually walled off from the aisles, as may be seen in Tintern: the walls were provided for from the beginning and were sometimes bonded into the piers. As a rule, such aisled presbyteries were short. Four bays was a usual length, as at Jervaulx, Netley and Tintern: this allowed two bays for the high altar and presbytery, and the quire was left in its normal position. But at Rievaulx the eastern arm was lengthened to seven bays and included the quire. The thirteenth-century enlargement at Fountains gave four bays to the altar and presbytery, without removing the quire; while behind the altar was built a vast eastern transept two bays deep, with nine chapels against its east wall and a processional path in the western bay. This unusual and beautiful plan was imitated with great splendour in the Benedictine church of Durham.

§ 39. The chief peculiarity of the Cistercian transept was the arrangement, already described, of its eastern chapels. This was modified in later times, as at Furness, where the vaulting of the chapels was removed and replaced by a wooden roof at a higher level, and screen-walls took the place of the solid divisions. The night-stair from the monks' dorter was very generally placed against the west wall of the adjacent transept; while in the end wall of the opposite transept was the doorway through which funerals passed to the graveyard. At Furness, where the church, by an exceptional arrangement, stands between the greater part of the _curia_ and the cloister, this doorway formed the main entrance to the church and was covered by a porch. Beaulieu, like Cîteaux, has the unusual feature of a western aisle in the transept opposite the cloister. Such aisles, though sometimes found in both transepts of Benedictine churches, are rare in the churches of Cistercians.

§ 40. Cistercian naves were not affected by the problem of parochial services, but served special purposes required by the peculiar constitution of the order. So far as the Sunday procession was concerned, their arrangements did not greatly vary from those of other monasteries, although the position of the western processional doorway with regard to the cloister was rather different. The west end of the quire was shut off by the _pulpitum_, which in the longer naves, as at Fountains, consisted of two parallel screens with a loft above, occupying a full bay, but was often a single screen-wall with a loft. Against the west face of the _pulpitum_ there were two altars, one on each side of the middle doorway. The bay west of these was called the retro-quire, where infirm and aged monks attended service, and was shut off on the west by the rood-screen. This was of the usual character, with an altar against its western face between two doorways. The nave west of the rood-screen was used as the quire of the lay brothers, who had a night-stair from their dorter in the adjacent aisle, and used the western processional doorway as their day-entrance. Their stalls were set against the walls which, as in the presbytery, shut the nave off from its aisles: these were discontinued in the westernmost bay, so as to give a clear entry for the lay brothers and for processions. This arrangement can be well seen at Tintern, where only the west bay on the north side, next the cloister, was left unwalled. The plan received its fullest extension at Fountains, where the nave was eleven bays long, of which seven were west of the rood-screen, while of the rest one was devoted to the quire, and one each to the _pulpitum_, the altars in front of it and to the retro-quire. At Furness, where there were ten bays, two were given to the quire, five were west of the rood-screen and the intermediate three were divided as at Fountains. In shorter churches, such as Buildwas (seven bays) and Tintern (six) some economy of space between the screens had to be studied. Thus, of eight bays at Kirkstall two were in the quire, four were west of the rood-screen, the _pulpitum_ occupied a whole bay, and the remaining bay contained the altars on its western side: the space beneath the _pulpitum_ may in this case have been used as a retro-quire. The _pulpitum_ at Valle Crucis was a single screen-wall between the western piers of the crossing, and the quire did not extend into the short nave. After the lay brethren had ceased to be a part of Cistercian convents, the walls dividing their quires from the nave-aisles were removed where they were not in bond with the piers, and chapels were then made in the eastern bays of the aisles. There is no trace of any new chapels at Furness, but there was probably always an altar there in each of the aisles, in a line with the altars next the _pulpitum_.

§ 41. The preference for a rectangular chancel, in our larger churches at any rate, may be attributed in some measure to the architectural influence exercised by the Cistercian order. It is certainly possible to trace Cistercian influence in some of the churches of canons regular. It cannot be said that churches of Augustinian canons followed any definite or uniform plan. Some, like St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, preferred plans for which the best contemporary models were Benedictine. But the plan of the first church at Haughmond was very like the early plans of Waverley and Tintern; and when this was superseded by a larger church with its longer axis further north than before, the new presbytery was still aisleless and was still walled off from the transept-chapels immediately adjoining. Of these there were two on either side, both rectangular in shape, and those next the presbytery were longer than those on the outside. The same plan of presbytery and transept-chapels is found at Lilleshall, and is known to have existed at Fountains before the presbytery was aisled. Similarly the plan of presbytery and transepts at Bolton and Brinkburn is distinctly Cistercian in origin, and, when the presbytery at Bolton was lengthened in the fourteenth century, its aisleless form was retained. In Premonstratensian churches the likeness to the normal Cistercian plan is often obvious. The original plan of the eastern portion of the church at St Agatha's was almost the same as that of Kirkstall; while the plan of the same part of Torre is virtually identical with those of Buildwas and Roche. As at Bolton, the aisleless presbytery at St Agatha's was prolonged in the fourteenth century to twice its original length.

§ 42. The plan of Haughmond and Lilleshall, in which the presbytery walls remained unpierced, while they were flanked with aisle-like chapels, is found in some Premonstratensian churches, as at Dale. At West Langdon the chapels were continued the whole length of the presbytery. Usually, however, they stopped short of the east end. The aisleless projection thus formed might contain, as at Alnwick, the high altar. But at St Radegund's near Dover, the eastern bay was the Lady chapel, and between it and the high altar was a space for processions, entered by doorways in the walls which divided it from the aisles and in the screen on either side of the high altar. In many Augustinian churches a further development of this plan is found, in which the chapels are real aisles, divided by arcades from the presbytery, as at Cartmel and Lanercost, and the eastern arm is so lengthened as to include the quire or a portion of it. At St Frideswide's, Oxford (now Christ Church cathedral), Repton and Dorchester, where the plans are somewhat complicated by the addition of one or more extra chapels on one side, the high altar was, as at Cartmel and Lanercost, in the eastern bay, and the procession in going from one aisle to another had to pass in front of it. The aisled portion, however, was sometimes planned, as at Bristol, to include the quire and presbytery and a bay for the processional path behind the high altar: this was also the plan of the church of secular canons at Southwell. The eastern limb of Christchurch, Hants, is similar in plan to that of Bristol; but here the high roof stopped above the altar, and the roofs of the processional path and Lady chapel, as at Winchester, are on a level with those of the aisles, while above them is an upper story or loft, formerly the chapel of St Michael. The ground-plan of the Cluniac church of Castle Acre was enlarged on the lines followed at Cartmel and Lanercost: that of Wenlock approximated to those followed at Bristol and Christchurch. Variations of these types of plan are seen in the thirteenth-century enlargements of the Benedictine churches of Rochester and Worcester, in which the quires were placed in the eastern arm. Both churches have eastern transepts, and in both cases the high vault was continued to the end of an aisleless eastern projection, in which the high altar stood at Rochester with a clear space behind it. At Worcester the aisleless bay was the Lady chapel, and the high altar stood west of the processional path.

§ 43. The naves of the larger churches of canons, such as Bridlington, Guisbrough and Worksop, were provided with their full complement of aisles. Christchurch and St Botolph's at Colchester are conspicuous instances of Augustinian conventual naves which were aisled in the twelfth century. But it is also certain that many canons' churches, like Haughmond, had no aisles to begin with. This, as we have seen, was a point in common between them and some early Cistercian churches. The nave at Lilleshall was never provided with aisles: the same thing happened at Kirkham, where the eastern arm was fully aisled in the thirteenth century. In such cases, where a nave had been originally planned without aisles, no aisle could be added on the side next the cloister without contracting the cloister or necessitating its rebuilding. Consequently aisleless naves were left as they were or were enlarged by an aisle only on the side which admitted of extension, opposite the church. The nave with a single aisle, although it is found in some Benedictine churches, as at the priories of Abergavenny and Bromfield, is certainly characteristic of churches of canons, and may be explained on these grounds. Among Augustinian examples are the churches of Bolton, Brinkburn, Canons Ashby, Haughmond, Hexham (as planned in the thirteenth century), Lanercost, Newstead, Thurgarton and Ulverscroft: Dorchester, where the broad south aisle is a westward continuation of the original south transept, may be placed in the same category. Premonstratensian churches of the type were Coverham, West Langdon, Shap and Torre. It has been suggested that this partial addition of aisles may have been caused by the canons' desire to rival aisled Benedictine churches. Large canons' churches, however, such as those already mentioned, if they were smaller than the great Benedictine churches, were at any rate as completely planned; and it is probable that the enlargement of aisleless naves was merely the result of the inconvenience of the cramped space, especially where new altars were needed. It had nothing to do with the needs of parishioners: only four out of the ten Augustinian, and none of the Premonstratensian examples given above contained parochial altars. The enlargement was frequently achieved, as at Canons Ashby and Thurgarton, with a beautiful and perfectly unambitious effect. At Newstead, however, the builders, in projecting their western façade, seem to have felt that the one-sided plan hardly gave them an opportunity for the elevation they wanted; and so they disingenuously balanced the west front of their north aisle by building out a screen-wall, similar in design, against the west wall of the cloister buildings. This work, executed with elaborate detail, shews that no funds can have been wanting to build a south aisle, but that the sole reason which prevented this was the inconvenience which would have been caused to the cloister.

§ 44. The division of an aisleless nave by screens is well illustrated at Lilleshall, where the bases of the _pulpitum_ and rood-screen both remain, and there was a wall further west which screened the nave from a vaulted vestibule, apparently planned as the ground-floor of a tower. Examples of aisleless naves are found in churches of all orders. Instances of Benedictine churches, such as St Benet's, Hulme, in Norfolk, are known, where this plan seems out of keeping with the importance and wealth of the convent. The Cluniac priory church of Bromholm is another case from the same county. Salley, a Cistercian church on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, had a fully aisled quire, but a very short aisleless nave, which was little more than a vestibule to the church and covered only the eastern part of the north walk of the cloister. The nave of the Scottish abbey of Kelso, which belonged to the order of Thiron, was also a mere vestibule or _narthex_, and forms a striking contrast to the long nave, with north and south aisles, of the neighbouring Augustinian church of Jedburgh.

§ 45. An entirely aisleless plan, in which the church was a mere parallelogram without transepts and without an arch between presbytery and nave, is found at the Cistercian abbey of Cymmer, near Dolgelly, where, however, a short north aisle or chapel was built later near the west end of the nave. Such a plan may have been used in many small houses, where there were only two or three brethren in priest's orders, and very few altars were needed in addition to the high altar. It was, in fact, the characteristic plan of the churches of certain orders. (1) Nuns' churches, such as Nun Monkton in Yorkshire, were very generally planned as aisleless rectangles, for the obvious reason that little more than one altar was necessary. It is rare to find a nunnery church planned on the scale of Romsey, with a full complement of aisles and transepts and a carefully contrived processional path. Sometimes, as at Lacock, a chapel was added to the church, but this was an excrescence which did not conceal the character of the original plan. (2) The ascetic Carthusian order preferred this plan, which was adopted at Mount Grace. It was modified, however, some years after the church was built, by the insertion of a tower upon arches between the presbytery and nave, west of which transeptal chapels were built out from the nave walls on either side. Still later, a long chapel, containing two altars, was built at right angles to the south wall of the presbytery. (3) The plans of friars' churches, which frequently, as at Lynn and Richmond, had a tower between the nave and presbytery, bear a strong family likeness to that of Mount Grace; and in some cases, as at Brecon and at Hulne, near Alnwick, they were without a structural division. The naves, however, of some of their later town churches, where large congregations attended the preaching of the Dominican order, were built, as in the splendid example at Norwich, with north and south aisles. (4) It is evident that churches of Gilbertine canons, as at Malton, sometimes followed an ordinary aisled plan. But in the double houses of the order, if Watton is typical of the rest, the church was a long aisleless building on one side of the nuns' cloister, and was divided lengthways by a wall, the division next the cloister being appropriated to the nuns, and the outer division, which had its own doorway, to the canons. There was a doorway in the wall between the two altars, which could be used for processions and by the celebrant at the nuns' altar; but the seclusion of the two portions of the convent was carefully maintained, and the holy-water and pax were passed from the nuns' to the canons' quire through a turn-table in the wall. The canons also had a chapel on the south side of their own cloister, which was a simple aisleless rectangle.