Part 6

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.

“Long-and-short” work pursues a more hardy existence. Quoining was necessary, and the “long-and-short” method was at once serviceable and fairly ornamental. So, while strip-work, a merely decorative arrangement of pilasters without constructive use, went its way, “long-and-short” quoining remained. We come across it chiefly at the angles of naves, which in several cases have been left almost untouched, when aisles of a later date have been added. St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts at Lincoln are cases in point. Bracebridge is an excellent example, for here all four angles of the nave can be traced. Cranwell, near Sleaford, and Ropsley, near Grantham, are other unmistakable instances. But here we must beware. The critic is too common who, assuming that a piece of wall is Saxon in character, immediately jumps to the conclusion that its quoining must be “long-and-short.” If the quoins are not arranged in a regular series of pieces alternately vertical and horizontal, then the work is not “long-and-short” work. If one or two stones thus arranged occur in the middle of irregular or of the common “small-stone” quoining, we are not justified in speaking of the fabric as showing “long-and-short” work. If the quoining shows a merely rough general resemblance to the “long-and-short” arrangement, it is not “long-and-short” work, but work of a quite haphazard type.

This brings us to one of the leading features which distinguish the towers so characteristic of Saxon work in Lincolnshire. We may study their angles to our heart’s content, and discover “long-and-short” work with the eye of faith, but we shall actually see it in only one instance, and there in the jambs of a western doorway of the tower, rather than in the quoining of the tower itself. In this instance, at Rothwell, near Caistor, the south-west quoining of the adjacent church has been left standing, like a small rectangular buttress, against the junction of the twelfth century nave and south aisle. It is formed of irregular stones, but such “long-and-short” work as there is, is confined to the tower. This is an exception. At the Lincoln churches and Bracebridge, where we have noticed “long-and-short” quoining at the nave angles, the quoining of the tower is of small stones; and this is universally the case. If we go northwards, by Marton, Heapham, Springthorpe, Corringham, Harpswell, and Glentworth, to Winterton and Alkborough; if we cross the Ancholme to Worlaby, and then go by Barton-on-Humber to Clee, Scartho, Holton-le-Clay, Waith, and Laceby; if we traverse the Wolds by Swallow, Cuxwold, Rothwell, and Cabourn to Caistor and Nettleton, and, descending by way of Hainton to Lincoln, make our way along the South Cliff to Branston, Harmston, and Coleby; if we go as far south as Boothby Pagnell, Little Bytham, and Thurlby-by-Bourn, and finish our journey in the midst of the parts of Holland at Great Hale, the only genuine piece of “long-and-short” work we shall have found in a western tower is that at Rothwell. It is true that this journey will have included more than one doubtful member of the family, and some of its genuine members which have lost, under the hand of the restorer, most of their appearance of age; but its result will be the establishment of the general rule that the Saxon tower-builder in Lincolnshire did not avail himself of the “long-and-short” method of quoining.

It will hardly need this journey to be convinced of his preference for the double window-opening, divided by the mid-wall shaft. This declares itself patently in the well-known towers at Lincoln; and all the towers mentioned above still have, or probably have had, such windows. Sometimes, as at Nettleton or Coleby, the belfry stage has been entirely renewed in the later Gothic period. Sometimes, as at Winterton or Alkborough, the tower has simply been heightened, and the Saxon belfry stage has become an intermediate storey. Sometimes, as at Cuxwold, the top of the tower has been lopped off altogether, or, as at Swallow, has been replaced by a modern stage in a rather incongruous style. In every case the original existence of the “mid-wall shaft” window cannot be reasonably doubted. The form of such openings as remain is very much the same. Its main outlines have been seen in the uppermost stage of the tower at Barton: two adjacent openings, with dressed jambs and voussoirs flush with the general surface of the wall, with rounded arches springing from through-stone impost-blocks, and received at their meeting by another such block, which rests on the mid-wall shaft itself. These openings pierce the wall without any splay. They have no strip-framing, and seldom, if ever, any attempt at hood-moulding. Although, as has been hinted, some beauty of form may be claimed for them, they are as simply constructed a type of arched opening as could well be devised. Their proportions are sometimes rather elegant; and, when they are set round a small upper stage, divided by a projecting string-course or off-set from the unbuttressed and sometimes slightly tapering length of the lower stage, their effect is always striking.

The architectural value of these towers, so simple in their principles of construction, so insignificant in their height, is less than their historical interest. Saxon builders had little architectural knowledge or skill; and buildings like Stow impress us more by their height and mass of wall than by any very striking architectural feature. The work at Barton-on-Humber is curious and interesting building: it is not architecture. In the Lincolnshire towers, a step is taken in the right direction by the avoidance of merely decorative surface-ornament. The tower asks for judgment on its own merits. Where it is divided by offsets into two or three stages, the result is satisfactory; although, if the belfry stage is of much the same area as the stage below, the tower looks top-heavy. This certainly is the case of St. Mary-le-Wigford. At St. Peter-at-Gowts, a small upper stage is set firmly and squarely upon a long and tapering lower one; and there is no finer tower in the whole series. The third type, where there is no off-set—the much-restored tower of Springthorpe is now, if it was not always, in this state—is merely insignificant.

The treatment of openings in these towers, other than the mid-wall shaft windows, is open to few variations. Western doorways are low and narrow: large stones are used in the jambs; and, though the heads are arched, the actual opening is covered by a flat lintel. The roughest of these openings is in the tower at Winterton, where the head of the doorway is formed by a huge stone, cut with a segmental curve on its under side to give the effect of an arch. Flat rectangular hood-mouldings of small projection sometimes follow the curve of the doorway arch and meet the extreme edge of the impost-block. At Clee, one of the best towers of the group, such a hood-moulding bounds a doorway head of two orders of voussoirs, the lower slightly recessed beneath the upper; but such refinements are rare. A similar recessing of a lower band of voussoirs occurs in the tower arches at Clee and Scartho, but in no case is it accompanied by any attempt at moulding the arch or recessing the jambs to match. An edge-roll was worked very tentatively at Nettleton along part of an unmoulded tower-arch, but was abandoned when about half completed. An ambitious and unique attempt at recessing, in the chancel arch at Broughton (now the arch from the tower into the nave), remains as a monument of the failure of the Saxon mason in his search for means of architectural expression. Both orders of the arch spring from an undivided impost-block, and the shafts, which should bear, and are intended to correspond to, the inner order, are stranded on either side of the back of the opening, with their heads left bare and their function denied them. As a rule, in doorways and tower arches, the mason was content with a plain unmoulded arch, springing from projecting impost-blocks on the top of jambs, the dressings of which are simply the quoins of a rubble wall. He varied the proportions of his tower arches, giving them great height, breadth, and dignity at St. Peter-at-Gowts, building them tall and narrow at Clee, Scartho, and Holton-le-Clay, or with rather less elevation and rather more breadth at Rothwell and Cabourn, frequently allowing them, as at Cuxwold or Alkborough, to remain low and rather broad in proportion. These variations of the tower arch constitute one of the most interesting features of this type of building: they introduce an element of individual design, and the loftier form of arch often produces by its mere size an effect which is not due to any obvious architectural virtue.

The lesser windows of the towers are usually small and narrow, with an inner splay. Their outer openings are often flanked by very large dressed stones: their rounded heads are seldom arched—there is a good arched window head in the south wall of the tower at Coleby—but are more often cut in the under side of a lintel; and sometimes this cut, exceeding a semicircle, produces the “key-hole” form of opening. At Rothwell there is in each wall of the tower, below the “mid-wall” windows, a small rectangular opening with a wide inner splay: a somewhat similar opening pierces the wall above the west door at Nettleton.

In the masonry of these towers two striking features are apparent. One is the disappearance of that “through-stone” treatment of dressed masonry, which is an undoubted characteristic of early Saxon work. A little doorway in the west wall of the north transept at Stow has voussoirs and jamb-stones, each of which faces the whole thickness of the wall. But the jambs below the tower arches are faced with double or triple, not single stones. And while it is rare to find a tower arch or doorway of this style formed of a core of rubble between facings of dressed stone, yet there are few in which the facing stones do not become less closely set together, and wide rubble fillings do not take the place of neat and close jointing. The other feature is the appearance of “herring-bone” masonry. This may be seen in some profusion at Broughton, and in a striking and unusual form at Marton; and, although it is not general, it occurs in other places.

Modifications in the tower plan are almost confined to an increase of dimensions which, in some members of the group—notably Caistor—is rather remarkable. One tower alone—Great Hale—introduces a newel staircase into an angle of the fabric; and this is almost absurdly unsuited to the probable size of those who had to climb it. We have seen that, at Hough and Broughton, nearly circular excrescences were formed to hold stairs on the west side of the towers. As a rule, we may believe that the upper floors of the towers were approached by ladders. It may be noted that in Lincolnshire there are very few of those openings above the tower arch, which are often quoted to prove the use of the tower as a place of habitation, and probably led to a landing and wooden stair communicating with the interior of the church. There are such, as at St. Peter-at-Gowts, Winterton, and Broughton; but they are exceptional, and the probable plan of Broughton makes it possible that, as at Barton-on-Humber, the opening was merely a piercing in the wall between nave and chancel.

But if there is little variation in plan, there is, as has been noted, even in the simplest towers, some degree of variation in detail. There are cases, moreover, in which the tendency to variation takes the direction of increased ornamental treatment. Instances are quite common in which the heads of the mid-wall shafts, bulging to support their impost-blocks, have been carved into the form of capitals—plain cubical or cushion-blocks, as at Winterton or Clee; rough suggestions of classical volutes and foliage, as at Glentworth or Scartho; varied forms of fruit and leafage, as at Bracebridge; or delicate and cleverly cut relief work, as at St. Peter-at-Gowts. And these capitals are not the only features which show the tendency. At Alkborough ornamental material has been transferred from some deserted Roman villa in the neighbourhood: a cornice from an entablature has been cut up, used as imposts, and turned upside down to form plinths for the jambs of the tower arch. But at Branston, south of Lincoln, the builders have not borrowed ornament. Like the masons at Broughton with their abortive recessed arch, they have tried to copy what they have heard of, what some of them at any rate have seen, and have covered the lower part of the west wall of their tower with arcaded panelling, with rounded arches and cushion capitals. This, and the central doorway with shafting and rudely foliated capitals, have been inspired from a source quite distinct from that which brought into being the strip-work panelling of Barton-on-Humber.

We are at once impelled to ask what this source is. And this question brings us to the consideration of two final questions, which are complementary to one another. What influences from the Christian architecture of other countries were felt by Lincolnshire masons? Is there any element of progress to be traced in the Saxon buildings of the county? In short, to combine the two questions into one, can any chronological sequence be traced in these buildings, by comparing them with the work of Romanesque builders in other countries?