“High Street,” is a very interesting spot. Its position is one of
great strength, and suggests a British origin, as it has all the
characteristics of a “promontory fortress.” It was surrounded by a wall,
strengthened at intervals by turrets or bastions, one of which remains in
ruins on the south side of the churchyard; there is also a considerable
fragment of the western wall in the garden of Grove Cottage. The exact
area of the station is difficult to estimate, as the north and east walls
have disappeared; but it was perhaps ten or twelve acres. There are two
fine springs issuing from the rock on the south side of the fortress.
In the churchyard, which is entirely within the area, Roman coins and
pottery are constantly found, but stone foundations seem absent, and the
fine ornamental ware is scarce. In early records the site is often termed
Than—or Thwang—Castre, probably from the tongue of land on which it
stands, and from this name Geoffrey of Monmouth ascribes its building[29]
to Hengist, according to the legend by which that mythical chieftain
encompassed an area granted him with “thongs” of ox-hide. The same
story is told of other “Tong Castles” in Shropshire and Kent, and seems
borrowed from Virgil’s account of the foundation of Carthage.
The occupation of our county by the Romans appears to have been more
thorough than is sometimes supposed. Only in the north-west corner—the
Isle of Axholme—which was then marshy and exposed to the Trent floods,
are traces of their presence wanting. Much more doubtless remains to
be discovered, for Eastern Lindsey is still comparatively unexplored.
The district seems to have been, as now, largely agricultural; and the
finding of over twenty villa sites in Kesteven and Lindsey indicates
that the wealthier class of landowners resided on their estates. This
circumstance points to a long period of peace, which may have lasted more
than a century—from about A.D. 170. During that time the road system
would be completed, and the industries of potters and saltworkers, so
characteristic of our county, gradually developed. But a time came
when the Pictish and Saxon marauders must have made great havoc in a
district which had a long sea-front, and was but slightly protected
by walled towns. In the year 368 these two sources of trouble united
to overwhelm the province like an invading flood. The northern tribes
broke across the Wall of Hadrian, and in concert with the sea-rovers,
who had defeated and slain the Count of the Saxon Shore, advanced their
plundering hosts to the very gates of London. By a series of victories,
Theodosius, the ablest of the imperial generals, gave the province
a short breathing-space. But the weight of taxation imposed by an
over-centralised government was gradually crushing the provincials; and
discontent gave an opening for the revolt of various usurpers in the
last days of the Roman rule. When the legions were finally withdrawn in
A.D. 410, the country districts became unsafe. Traces of fire in the
ruined villas of Scampton, Worlaby, and other places betray the work of
a ruthless, uncivilised foe. The owners may have escaped to the towns,
or even, if wealthy, have reached the Continent. But their industry was
doomed, and many miles of cultivated land must have passed back into mere
prairie. The banks and drains were neglected, and much of the fenland,
so laboriously won, returned to its former flooded state. If we could
recover the story of one large town, such as Lincoln, in the fifth and
sixth centuries, many a dark problem would be solved. In the absence of
such records, the withdrawal of the Roman legions and officials is like
the ringing down of a thick curtain upon the drama of British history in
the ancient world.
SAXON CHURCHES IN LINCOLNSHIRE
BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON, M.A.
Lincolnshire is more rich than any other English county in churches
which, if few are indisputably of a date earlier than the Norman
conquest, retain traces of an architecture whose character at any rate
is of a distinctly pre-Norman type. The county has nothing to show, it
is true, of that early work, associated with the first century of Saxon
and Anglian Christianity, which gives so unique an interest to the
church architecture of certain districts in Kent and Northumbria. The
neighbouring shire of Northampton possesses in Brixworth a monument whose
importance overshadows that of Stow, and in Barnack and Earl’s Barton
buildings which are, in point of detail, a match for Barton-on-Humber;
while many who might hesitate to grant the pre-Conquest origin of
Bracebridge, could hardly deny it to the Northamptonshire church of
Wittering. The missionary visit of St. Paulinus has left but one
trace, in the dedication to St. “Paul” of a church in Lincoln, of the
connection of Lindsey with the religious life of Northumbria. That
distinction on which Lincolnshire has prided itself, the possession
of a Saxon cathedral at Stow, not hidden away in the foundations of a
later building, but still in use as a parish church, begins to lose its
value as the historical evidence on which it depends is more carefully
examined. With the exception of Stow and St. Peter’s at Barton, the Saxon
monuments of Lincolnshire are humble and unpretentious in character,
without any very definitely architectural features; and he would be a
bold man who should assert positively, on the little evidence which we
have to show for their date, that they were built in days of Saxon rule.
Equally bold was the assertion of Professor Freeman with regard to the
two towers in the southern suburb of Lincoln, that native workmen built
them while the Minster was rising in the style of the conquerors on the
hill above.[30] Such positiveness is rebuked by the discovery that this
picturesque statement was founded on evidence referring to churches in
a different part of the city.[31] Avoiding either extreme, we may say,
in our present state of knowledge, that most of the so-called Saxon
churches of Lincolnshire represent a late state of Saxon art, open to
Norman influence, but preserving a distinctly national tradition. Some of
these monuments are undoubtedly later than the Conquest: of others, and
perhaps of the majority, it may be said that, though a post-Conquest date
is possible, yet the character of the work is of a kind that might be
expected rather before the Conquest than after, and belongs at any rate
to a type of art prior to the general spread of Norman influence. Thus
the epithet “Saxon” may fairly be given to such buildings, even though,
in point of date, they may belong to the Norman period.
[Illustration: ST. PETER’S CHURCH, BARTON-ON-HUMBER.]
Of the pre-Norman date of the lowest stages of the tower and of the
western forebuilding of St. Peter’s at Barton-on-Humber there can be
no doubt, as we shall presently see. And at Barton the chief point of
interest comes into view, in which these churches are of most importance
to the architectural student. At the end of the tenth century, a date
which may perhaps be claimed without extravagance for the Barton church,
the parish church plan in England was a matter of experiment. The
basilican plan with aisles had never been popular beyond a few larger
churches: Lincolnshire does not furnish us with a single instance of
the nave with aisles or of the apsidal sanctuary, which, with certain
modifications, are features of some Saxon plans. The simple plan of
aisleless nave and rectangular chancel, which had been adopted probably
in most Saxon churches, had been complicated by the introduction of
the tower into the scheme. The tower was for the present the uncertain
factor whose place in the plan the Lincolnshire builders, and those
of other counties with them, were trying to determine; and it is the
position of the tower which gives Lincolnshire Saxon ground-plans their
peculiar importance. We may be doubtful about the place of towers like
Earl’s Barton and Barnack in the plan: they may have been merely western
appendages to churches which have now been entirely replaced by later
buildings, or they may have been the church itself, with its walls raised
into a lofty tower, at once a place for bells and a look-out in time
of danger. There can be no such doubt at Barton-on-Humber. In our own
day the tower and its western annexe stand at the west end of a large
late Gothic church; but, at a restoration in 1898, the foundations of
an eastern annexe, very similar in size and shape to the western, were
discovered, showing beyond all doubt that the tower formed the main
body of the church, standing between a chancel and what may have been
a baptistery—rooms for the altar and the font—of almost equal size.
The tower was broader than its adjunct: two entrances remain, one on
the north, the other on the south, opposite each other, and towards
the western end of either wall. Mr. Hodgson Fowler, who discovered the
foundations of the chancel, also discovered other foundations, presumably
of Saxon date, to the east of the tower, which seem to suggest that a
larger building with an elongated plan was in contemplation, but was
superseded by a compact plan which found itself centralised in the space
allotted to the tower.[32]
A somewhat similar plan occurs at Broughton, a village some four miles
west of Brigg, and close to the line of Roman road which led from
Lincoln to the Humber. Here the fabric has none of those distinctively
Saxon features which are found at Barton; it is almost certainly a
work of later date. The eastern wall of the tower, as at Barton, has
been absorbed in the breadth of an aisled nave of a later period; but
the eastern quoins are still visible, continuing to the ground, and
indicating that the tower was once broader than the portion of the
building east of it. That this eastern building, moreover, was small,
and that the bulk of the congregation occupied the space west of it, is
suggested by the fact that, as in many later chancel arches, decorative
treatment—too rude here to be taken very seriously as architectural
membering, in spite of its efforts—is confined to the western face of
the arch by which the chancel was approached from the tower-space.
Here, then, we have once more the tower-space forming the main area for
worship, with a small chancel to the east. At Broughton, however, instead
of the corresponding western annexe which we find at Barton, there is a
large three-quarter-circular projection, containing a newel staircase
which leads to the belfry stage of the tower; and, instead of the two
doorways at Barton, there is only one, this time in the south wall. The
western projection at Broughton is often ridiculously called a western
apse. It is, and always was, a turret for a staircase. Three other such
turrets exist. One, at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, was added in front
of an earlier western doorway, when the original porch of the basilican
church was heightened into a tower. Another, at Brigstock in the same
county, forms an integral part of a western tower with strongly Saxon
features; its staircase was always of wood, as may have been originally
the case at Broughton.[33] The third instance is in Lincolnshire, at
Hough-on-the-Hill, seven or eight miles north of Grantham. Here the stair
turret is part of a western tower of more than probably pre-Conquest
date, and of proportions as ample as those of Earl’s Barton; and one is
tempted to discover a parallel to Broughton, and another quasi-parallel
to Barton-on-Humber. But the face which the tower presents to the
church behind it is singularly blank; and it remains to be seen whether
there lie hid, beneath the plaster, quoins, like those at Broughton, to
indicate the existence of a chancel whose foundations may still be buried
beneath the western floor of the nave.
At Barton and Broughton, and possibly at Hough, we are face to face with
a small compact plan—at Barton definitely centralised in the tower-space,
at Broughton without the same centralisation, but with the main body of
the church still gathered beneath the tower. In these cases, when we
speak of the tower and the tower-space, we must regard the tower simply
as an upward continuation of the body of the church. The congregation has
not found shelter on the ground-floor of a tower: the tower is the upper
storey or storeys of their church. However, in the two further instances
of towers not western which Lincolnshire affords us, the tower-space must
probably be regarded as a feature in the plan distinct from the main body
of the building; it is not a church on which a tower has risen, but a
space which is there because a tower forms a definite part of the design.
Waith Church, a few miles south of Grimsby, is for the most part a modern
Gothic building, with an entirely modern plan.[34] But between the
chancel and nave, and flanked by a south transept, rises a tower of a
type very familiar to travellers in Lincolnshire, but here alone seen in
a central position. Its position must always, however, have been between
eastern and western out-buildings; for its eastern and western walls
are pierced by low arches of equal height and width, very different in
proportion from the ordinary western doorway and tower arch. There seems
to have been no entrance in either of the side walls. In all probability,
then, we have here, not a definitely centralised plan, but a tower-space
intervening between a nave and chancel. Of the relative dimensions of
these to the tower-space it is impossible to speak: we have no remains
to guide us. Again, this tower may have been simply an elevation of
the eastern portions of the nave walls, as in those cases to which the
term “axial” has been given; or, as in some Norman churches, it may
have projected north and south of the adjacent nave and chancel. In the
last case, we should have the ground-plan of Barton-on-Humber, with its
centralised character probably destroyed by the elongation of its western
annexe. The nave and the tower-space become independent divisions of the
plan.
[Illustration: ST. MARY’S CHURCH, STOW, LOOKING EAST.]
The Saxon church of Stow survives only in part; and to assert that the
present fabric, which is largely of the later part of the eleventh and
the earlier part of the twelfth century, is a rebuilding of the older
church on its original scale, would be to assert what we do not know.
However, the church was planned on a scale somewhat more imposing than
was usual in Saxon times; and enough of the older work is left in the
transepts to assure us that they, at any rate, covered their present site
from the date of its foundation. Their length and general proportions
postulate a nave to match; and we may assume, without much doubt, that
the present Norman nave rose upon Saxon foundations. The chancel may have
been enlarged to its present dimensions by Norman builders; this is, at
least, more likely than that the Saxon chancel was equally spacious. The
visitor to Stow about the time of the Conquest would have seen nave,
chancel, and transepts, as indeed the visitor to-day may see them,
grouped round a central tower, which rose straight from the ground in
their midst, independent of their buttressing aid. The quoins of the
tower go down to the ground; the arches which connect the tower-space
and the adjacent arms of the building are, as it were, piercings in the
tower walls rather than the actual substructure on which the tower walls
rested.[35] The tower-space at Stow is thus in some measure a central
area, the focus of the plan; and a vivid imagination might conjure up in
this instance the Barton-on-Humber plan reproduced on a larger scale,
and converted into a Greek cross by the addition of transepts. But it is
more probable that here, as at Waith, the tower-space is shifted slightly
to one side of the centre of the plan, and, while keeping much of its
dignity in the general scheme, is no longer the main body of the building.
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.