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.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. Plan of the cathedral priory, Canterbury (after
Professor Willis).]
§ 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.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Croyland abbey: rood-screen and nave from S.E.]
§ 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.
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of typical Cistercian church, shewing
original form and later eastern enlargement.]
§ 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.
[Illustration: Fig. 4. Tintern abbey: north transept and presbytery,
shewing doorways to dorter and sacristy.]
§ 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.
[Illustration: Fig. 5. Mount Grace priory: tower-arches and nave from
N.E.]
§ 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.