Part 7
We already have allowed the term “Saxon” to them, on the understanding that a pre-Conquest date is not implied thereby, but merely the fact that their style is different from that of buildings to which we give the term “Norman.” It may also be premised that, in considering their relative date, we have to deal cautiously and tentatively with a series of probabilities. We must also put legend aside. A hardy tradition, resting on no authentic basis, but engraved on a brass tablet within the church, points to certain traces of fire in the church of Stow as evidence of its burning by the Danes in 870. If this were true, and if the lower walls of the tower, as they exist to-day, were the tower walls of the Saxon cathedral of Sidnaceaster, we should be able to point to a church of the ninth century, if not earlier, which would probably have supplied an architectural standard to the diocese. However, we have nothing but the size of the church and an unfounded, if time-honoured, assumption to give it claim to cathedral rank. The very name of Sidnaceaster was probably invented in post-Conquest times, by some one who misread the signature of one of the bishops of Lindsey to the decrees of a Saxon council.[40] And, finally, the authentic history of the church of Stow does not begin till about the year 1040, when Eadnoth, Bishop of Dorchester, with the powerful assistance of Earl Leofric and his wife Godiva, set a band of religious men on the site hallowed by memories of the miraculous sojourn of St. Etheldreda on her flight from York to Ely. All that lies behind 1040 in connection with this church is pure romance. When Bishop Rémi later in the century restored St. Mary’s Minster at Stow, what he probably did was to complete Eadnoth’s ambitious beginnings, on a worthy scale, out of reverence for St. Etheldreda, and not out of sentimental feeling for an old cathedral church which he had superseded for all time by his new church at Lincoln. If a small archdeaconry in the Norman diocese of Lincoln, corresponding to the original district of Lindsey, took its name from Stow, we must not consider this as admitting the old cathedral dignity of Stow. The size of Eadnoth’s and Rémi’s church made it the most prominent building in the archdeaconry: no more convenient or suitable name could be supplied to the district.[41]
1040, then, is a recognised date to which we can refer the earliest work at Stow. We know, too, that a church was founded at Alkborough in 1052, and the work in the western tower there, with its triangular-headed belfry windows, may be claimed for that date or not long after. These are practically the only two pieces of dated evidence on which we can rely, for we have already seen that the evidence as to Coleswegen’s churches at Lincoln does not apply to existing buildings.[42] Stow, as we have seen, retains strip-framing to the tower jambs on a large scale: “long-and-short” work occurs in the north transept doorway and in the jambs of a window opening in the south transept: through-stone masonry is used in the north transept doorway, but abandoned in the tower arch jambs. Alkborough has none of these characteristics. We are thus at liberty to assume a gradual cessation of purely Saxon technique between 1040 and 1052.
Further, at Barton-on-Humber, although we have no documentary evidence to guide us, it is obvious that the tower is of two styles. The uppermost stage forms an addition to the original design in a somewhat more simple style. An interval of date between the stages is certain: the length of that interval would be hard to ascertain. But the fantastic strip-panelling and “long-and-short” work of the lower stages of the tower belong to the height of a fashion in architecture which is seen gradually disappearing at Stow. The strip-framing and “long-and-short” work at Stow are of a different and less purely decorative type: we are not surprised when in the upper stage of the tower at Barton, or in the tower at Alkborough, they disappear altogether. So far, then, this statement of progress is justifiable. The lower stages of the tower at Barton are obviously earlier than the upper stage. The upper stage has affinities of detail with the tower at Alkborough, and clearly belongs to much the same or a slightly later period. The tower at Alkborough is at least twelve years later than the only trustworthy date for the early work at Stow. And, as we have just seen, the work at Stow, in its selection and treatment of elements which had been used at Barton in careless profusion, is probably later in date than the earlier portion of Barton. With Barton may be grouped, from the character of its “long-and-short” quoining and the window-openings of its stair turret, the interesting tower at Hough-on-the-Hill. With Stow we may group, at any rate provisionally, those fabrics which have “long-and-short” quoining of a substantial type, flush with the surface of the wall, instead of projecting in rather thin strips beyond it—this will include, as we have noticed, some naves of churches. With Alkborough and the upper stage at Barton can be combined church towers generally, Hough alone excepted, and work of a partly Saxon character, like that at Stragglethorpe, not far from Hough. The “long-and-short” work in Rothwell tower is so small in quantity that it can hardly be treated as an exception to the third group.
Professor Baldwin Brown, in his valuable monograph on Saxon ecclesiastical architecture, has provided strong arguments for the influence of Teutonic Romanesque architecture on our Saxon builders.[43] It has long been the fashion to suppose that the decorative detail at Barton-on-Humber and other kindred churches is an imitation of timber construction in stone; the rudeness of treatment makes the supposition excusable. But we can hardly grant that Saxon builders could have imitated a system of construction which was not at any rate general till a much later date; and it is much more likely that the work at Barton is copied roughly and clumsily from a type of decorative work which, in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, was common in the Rhenish provinces and in the districts of Northern Italy architecturally related to them. It is unquestionable that the double opening with mid-wall shaft found its origin in the same provinces. Northern Italy doubtless exercised its influence on Germany; Germany, in turn, influenced the Saxon masons. In three other cases at least German influence is more than probable. It is certainly responsible for the double-splayed window-opening; it probably affected the simple type of capital which was developed into the cushion capital of later days; the unfaced rubble masonry and thin walling of Saxon churches are found commonly in early Romanesque German churches, and are the antithesis of the faced rubble and thick walling of Normandy and the Romanesque buildings of France; while the position of the western tower in the Saxon plan is a further German feature.
On the details of English intercourse with Germany it is unnecessary to dwell. There is plenty of evidence to show that a close connection existed between the two countries, which cannot but have had influence on the progress of art in England. That progress must have been practically at a standstill during the long epoch of Danish invasion. The date at which we may most reasonably expect an architectural revival to be general is that period, the last thirty to forty years of the tenth century, when so many monasteries were rebuilt or newly founded, and the monastic life re-established. This revival was strongly influenced by the monasteries of the Netherlands, which lay in the direct current of architectural progress between Germany proper and England. To this date at earliest, then, may be assigned the earliest parts of the church at Barton-on-Humber, and possibly the tower at Hough. We cannot go further back without deserting probability. At the same time, if we limit this work to the latter half of the tenth century on the one hand, we are not precluded from allowing that it may be later. Barton-on-Humber lay in the very path of the Danish invaders who established their power in England between 1002 and 1014. The base of operations of the heathen Swegen was at Gainsborough; there he died, and there he was said, though wrongly, to have been buried. The older parts of the church at Barton show no sign of the ruin which we might expect to have thus befallen them. Perhaps the church was left roofless by Swegen, but restored and completed, with the upper stage added to the tower, towards the middle or after the middle of the eleventh century. But it is also equally probable that the whole lower structure may be a rebuilding under the Christian Canute of a church ruined by his father; and that, after an intermediate stage in which the church may have taken the form shown by Professor Baldwin Brown, the tower was heightened by a storey.
The oldest Saxon fabrics in Lincolnshire need not, therefore, be earlier than the eleventh century. It will be noticed that of these Barton gives us a centralised plan, while Hough presents a plan which certainly is not in keeping with that of the usual western tower. The head of the second group, Stow, is another experiment in “central” planning. The remaining anomalies of plan, Broughton and Waith, belong, in the matter of technique, to the third group, in which the western tower predominates overwhelmingly. The German features of the third group already have been described. But they are less marked than those of earlier groups, and the buildings are open to influences, especially decorative influences, of quite another kind.
Towers like those of St. Mary-le-Wigford and St. Peter-at-Gowts, or of Bracebridge, may be regarded, on the strength of their different quoining and their lack of any bond with the fabric behind, as final additions to churches which, in point of date, we have provisionally classified with Stow. Not infrequently, the tower and church were built together without afterthought, as at Winterton, where the ends of the nave walls still remain in bond with the tower, enclosed within the spacious church of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. If we attempt to classify these towers chronologically, however, we may try several standards. The relative height and width of the tower arch affords no criterion; this seems to be varied at the fancy of local masons. Again, rude attempts at moulding, like that at Nettleton, tell us nothing; the moulded tower arch at Corringham is so out of keeping with the tower itself that it can hardly be part of the original design; the wide arch at Harmston is clearly a reconstruction achieved comparatively late in the twelfth century. But the absence of through-stone masonry, the approach to the system of rubble core and dressed facing, indicate a growing assimilation to “Norman” methods. The tower at Waith has a facing of rough ashlar, which is found in no other Lincolnshire tower of the type. Another tell-tale sign is the appearance of herring-bone work, which Norman builders used freely in the walling of their earlier castles, and builders of the pre-Conquest period certainly used little, if at all. The “herring-bone” masonry of the tower at Marton is identical in style with that in the curtain-wall of Tamworth Castle.
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.
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.
That the settlement of its walls is not all of recent date is shown by the heavy fifteenth or sixteenth century buttress built against its north wall, but undoubtedly its dilapidation has seriously increased of late years.
The chapel is a simple oblong in plan, measuring inside the walls 43 feet 6 inches in length by 19 feet 6 inches in width, with side walls 2 feet 8 inches, and east and west walls about 3 feet 2 inches thick.
It is divided on plan into three bays by vaulting inside and by buttresses outside; and divided horizontally in two parts by strings running round the building externally and internally. The height from the floor to the inside string is 6 feet, and from the floor to the crown of the vaulting 21 feet.
Both east and west gables have been taken down, and the whole building is now covered by a low-pitched roof hipped at each end, with a poor modern bell-cote of perhaps about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
At the east end is a triplet of unequal lancets, with well-moulded arches internally and double-shafted jambs, the shafts having carved caps and well-moulded bases, the outer shafts also being banded. The centre light is 8 feet 9 inches high and 1 foot 2 inches wide, the side ones being 7 feet high and 9 inches wide.
The exterior of the west end is extremely effective, a richly moulded doorway under the outer string, which is here raised to a height of 11 feet 10 inches, having above it a very well designed composition of three arches, all well moulded, the outer two being blank and the centre one containing a deeply-recessed vesica window about 5 feet 2 inches high and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter.
The two side walls have each six lancets, each about 8 feet high and 9 inches wide, all with shafted jambs internally having carved caps and moulded bases, but plain splayed arches.
Near the west end of the north wall is a second doorway—now walled up—and in the north-west angle a doorway leading into a stair turret.
The vaulting is quadripartite in the centre and western bays, but sexpartite in the eastern one. The ribs spring from carved and moulded corbels, themselves springing from the string round the building. The vaulting ribs are about 9 inches thick, well moulded with a centre and two side rolls and deep hollows between, the transom ribs having the hollows filled with acutely pointed dog-tooth moulding, the diagonal ribs being without it. The springing of these ribs is about 10 inches above the corbels. There is no ridge rib, but there are well-carved bosses at the intersection of the diagonal ribs, the centre and western ones being all foliage, the eastern one foliage, with the _Agnus Dei_ in the centre.
Externally the building is divided into bays by rather flat buttresses of about 1 foot 6 inches projection, running up into a corbel table on the two side walls. The corbels are simply chamfered, and carry an equally simple cornice.
At the north-west angle the two buttresses are of rather greater projection and of considerable width, giving space inside them for the staircase mentioned before.
The west doorway is an excellent example of good Lincolnshire thirteenth-century work, the arches well moulded and enriched with dog-tooth, the jambs having one attached and two detached shafts with well-carved capitals.
The carving of these and all the other capitals in the chapel is of the stiff “celery” stalk foliage so common in Lincolnshire work, and all, equally with the mouldings, refined and evidently the work of high-class masons and carvers.
Internally there are no ancient features beyond those already mentioned, except a very simple triangular-headed piscina in the eastern bay of the south wall. The projecting part of its basin has been broken off, but two grooves for a wooden shelf remain.
The chapel, being a donative without restriction, was used as a Presbyterian chapel from 1720 to 1812, and was then filled up with pews, and a pulpit of Jacobean character, apparently previously in the chapel, was erected in front of the east window.
Most fortunately, however, in thus fitting up the chapel, the joiner incorporated in the pews two pieces of an Early English screen, of an exceedingly interesting description, and which no doubt originally cut off the eastern bay from the body of the chapel. These two pieces are each about 6 feet long, and consist of an open arcade, the upper part of the screen, each having six trefoil-headed openings, the heads being cut out of boards only ⅞ inch thick and rudely pinned on to uprights 2⅞ inches square worked into octagonal shafts 1¾ inch in diameter, with moulded caps and bases. The whole work is somewhat rude in execution, but is an extremely valuable specimen of early woodwork.