Category: History - British
In dealing with the introduction of church architecture into our own land, the task would be much simplified if one could state with certainty when the first church was built on British soil. Some historians assert that the Church of England as it is constituted to-day dates n...
In dealing with the introduction of church architecture into our own land, the task would be much simplified if one could state with certainty when the first church was built on...
2. Chapter 2In the early years of the Christian Church, when its members became sufficiently free from persecution to erect buildings for the purpose of worship, they were naturally anxious...
3. Chapter 3As we have seen in the previous chapter, the whole subject of pre-Saxon church building is still very obscure, and for some considerable time after the Anglo-Saxon invasion litt...
4. Chapter 4The origin of what is loosely called Gothic architecture--which is generally considered to include the styles, with their transitions, from Early English to late Perpendicular,...
5. Chapter 5The best examples of Gothic architecture may be said to have been erected between the years 1180 and 1300, and from the latter year many writers date the commencement of its dec...
6. Chapter 6Towards the close of the XIVth century a great change came over English Gothic architecture, a change which was to a certain extent a return to classical ideas. The curvilinear...
7. Chapter 7So far we have been considering Gothic churches, but we now come to the time when, from a variety of causes, the Italian architects, among them Palladio and Vitruvius, began to...
8. Chapter 8The most important part of the internal furniture of a church is the altar, a name derived from the Latin _altare_, a high place. The altar is a raised structure on which propit...
9. Chapter 9The history of bells is lost in antiquity, and little is known about them previous to the XVth century. It is probable, however, that they were used in India and China centuries...
10. Chapter 10Probably the most beautiful feature of a Gothic church is the spire, raising its tapering form far above the town or village and forming a prominent landmark, denoting the locat...
11. Chapter 11The use of coloured glass in the windows of buildings devoted to religious purposes appears to have been employed as early as the ninth century, but no examples remain of anythi...
12. Chapter 12The crypts so generally found beneath our cathedrals and abbeys, and so frequently under our churches, rarely extend beyond the choir or chancel and its aisles, and are sometime...
13. Chapter 13Having carefully read the foregoing chapters, it should be possible for anyone interested in the subject to be able to write a fairly accurate description of any old church. The...