Review of the developments in the early Architecture of our own
land--Recent research in Central Syria--Examples in Northern Europe
previous to the eleventh century--Early remains in Scotland and
Ireland--Anglo-Saxon Architecture--Churches founded by St.
Augustine--Canterbury and York--Churches at Hexham and
Ripon--Ramsey Abbey--Winchester Cathedral--Destruction of Churches
by Sweyn--Restoration and building by Canute--Roman
models--Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon work--Brixworth Church,
Northamptonshire Church on the Castlehill, Dover--Worth Church,
Sussex--Bradford Church, Wilts--Chancel of Saxon Church at
Jarrow-on-the-Tyne--Churches of Monk Wearmouth and Stow--Crypts at
Wing, Repton, and Lastingham--Towers of St. Benet’s, Cambridge:
Trinity Church, Colchester: Earls Barton: Barnach:
Barton-on-Humber: Sompting, Sussex: and Clapham,
Bedfordshire--Chapel at Greensted, Essex--Classification into
periods of this form of Architecture.
In commencing a series of lectures in my capacity as the official
occupant of this professorial chair, I feel in some degree shackled by
the circumstance that, though the _office_ is new to me, its _duties_
(so far as the lectures go) are not so: inasmuch as, during the latter
years of the tenure of this office by our venerated Professor Cockerell,
I was, in conjunction with Mr. Smirke, called upon to occupy the place
from which ill-health and infirmity compelled him to be absent; and at a
later time I have done the same for my immediate predecessor, Mr.
Smirke, when circumstances interfered, for one season, with his
lectures. I have, consequently, already given nine lectures from this
chair without being its rightful occupant; and, now that I commence
officially, I find the novelty of anything I might have had to say in a
great degree worn off by anticipation. I have consequently been puzzled
whether to begin afresh or to go on from the point I had reached. The
former would, perhaps, be the most correct course; but, after long
uncertainty, I feel it to be too artificial to sever what I said out of
office from what I have to say in office, and I have determined to link
my future lectures on to those which have preceded them. I shall also
for the present limit myself to Mediæval architecture as the subject on
which I have been engaged.
In my previous lectures I have given an outline of the development of
Pointed architecture from the preceding round-arched style, and followed
on with some practical suggestions as to the study of these phases of
architecture. In them I have treated equally of foreign and English
buildings, or have, perhaps, dwelt more at length on the former, and
have carefully traced the connection of English with French architecture
as they grew up, side by side, from the common germ, each to its
glorious perfection.
I purpose now to fall back upon the commencement of this series of
developments, and, while I go more in detail into the varied features of
the architecture of these periods, to limit myself, during the present
session at least, very much to its English productions.
My reason for this is, that we have of late been directing our attention
too exclusively to foreign buildings, greatly to the neglect of our
own,--so much so, that many of our architectural students seem to be as
little acquainted with the Mediæval works of their own country as if
they were brought up in Italy or France.
I hold the study of the contemporary buildings of neighbouring
countries, especially those of France, to be essential to the due
understanding of our own, and of the style _as a whole_; but this
affords no excuse for the neglect of English architecture, to which,
beyond all question, we are bound, as English architects, to direct our
primary attention, and which will repay our study by a series of special
beauties of its own, which have of late years been almost wholly
overlooked.
In reviewing the changes in the architecture of our own country, it may
be wholesome to begin early:--to “look at the rock whence we were hewn,
and to the hole of the pit whence we were digged.” A retrospect such as
this gives rise to some curious reflections. At one time we feel
perplexed by the depth of antiquity into which we are directing our
view, and at another with the very reverse of this. When we go beyond
the Norman Conquest,--beyond the destructive ravages of the
Danes,--through the half-mythic times of the Heptarchy and the heroic
age of the Pagan Saxons; and, again, beyond the destruction of the Roman
arts; through the mystic and hazy age which intervened between the
withdrawal of the Roman and the conquest by the Saxon; again, through
the four centuries of Roman domination into the unknown abyss of
prehistoric Britain, what a vast lapse of time does it represent! Yet
the earliest period we thus reach is, nevertheless, some four centuries
subsequent to the close of the Old Testament history and the period of
Pericles and Phidias, and perhaps fifteen centuries subsequent to many
of the great monuments of Egypt!
Archaic art seems to have the power of reproducing itself; and even the
ages of heroic and barbaric myth may re-occur after periods in which
society and civilisation may appear to have worn themselves out by
over-refinement; and thus, when we attempt to trace out the early
Christian architectural arts of the nations of Northern Europe, we find
ourselves as much in the mist of antiquity as if we were prying into
that which preceded the Pyramids or the earliest palace of Nimroud,
though we are in reality examining works subsequent to the time when the
empire of Rome fell to pieces from sheer old age.
In taking an enlarged view of Mediæval architecture, we must view it in
two distinct but at the same time united aspects; we must view it as the
architecture indigenous to the modern as distinguished from the ancient
civilisation; but we must also view it as having been developed upon an
antique nucleus.
There are also two other separate, though united, views which we ought
to take of it. We should view it, on the one hand, as the work of men
elaborating, as from the beginning, a new system of art on the mere
reminiscences of an old and defunct system,--_absolutely_ defunct as
relates to the northern races,--but we should view it also as, all the
while, aided by the yet living art of the Eastern Empire and by the
smouldering embers of that of Rome itself.
In some districts there may have been a tradition remaining of some old
method of building which had prevailed among the Pagan, Celtic, or
Teutonic tribes; but the germ may generally be said to have been Roman
or Byzantine, founded on reminiscences, and aided, from time to time, by
direct communication.
The two great divisions of Mediæval architecture are, _firstly_, that
which preceded, and, _secondly_, that which followed the great
transition of the latter half of the twelfth century. The whole may be
viewed as the one great development of arcuated construction into a
style of art, and its two great divisions are the round-arched and the
pointed-arched styles.
It is my purpose during the present session to limit myself very much to
the former; but viewing it, not only in its own bearings, but also as
the precursor of the latter. Though I intend to choose my illustrations
almost wholly from buildings in our own country, it would be taking a
very narrow view of our subject if we were to consider the great
round-arched style otherwise than as a whole, and our own portion of it
other than as a branch of that mighty bifurcated tree whose boughs,
whether growing from its eastern or its western stem, spread themselves
over the whole civilised world.
It has been well remarked, by Mr. Freeman, in his _History of
Architecture_, that the ancient Roman manner of building was essentially
an _arcuated_ style, though its true character was artificially overlaid
by the features belonging to the purely _trabeated_ style of Greece; and
that the whole course of change through which it, in after ages, passed,
may be described as the gradual throwing off the trabeated overlayings
and the perfecting into an architectural style its vital germ,--the
_arcuated system_.
This process was carried on equally in the East as in the West, though
under circumstances accidentally differing. The two great metropolises
of the Christian Roman empire, commencing with the same architecture,
gradually changed it into two distinct branches, though clearly
belonging to the same great trunk. In _both_ the changes or developments
took for their starting-point the architecture, not of Greece, but of
Rome. In the West, they continued to follow the natural suggestions of
that style, influenced deeply by the changed religion, and subsequently
curbed and held down, first by the removal of the seat of government to
Constantinople, and then by the continuous waves of the northern
invaders who gradually brought down to a very low ebb the civilisation
and arts of the Western empire.
In the East, the influence of the Christian worship was at least equally
deep; while the presence of the imperial court and government offered
greater advantages to development, and the accidental preference for
_domed_ construction gradually gave a wholly new tone to the general
character of the architecture, while the proximity of ancient Greek
remains had a very strong influence on the ornamentation.
Different, however, as is the general aspect of a Byzantine and
Romanesque building,--especially when the former assumes its crowning
feature, the dome,--it cannot be denied that they are, nevertheless, the
same style in two phases; and that there is no such contradiction
between them as to forbid their amalgamation to any extent. In proof of
this, we have the not incongruous character of the Crusaders’ buildings
in the East, in which the dome was not forbidden; the similarity to
Romanesque of such of the Byzantine buildings as do not happen to have
domes; the introduction into France of the domed architecture by a
colony of Greeks; the admission of much that is Byzantine into the
Romanesque buildings of Germany; and finally, the very extensive use of
purely Byzantine foliage and other forms of ornamentation into the
buildings of Western Europe in the twelfth century. This last-named
circumstance I have dwelt upon at length in one of my former lectures,
and I shall, no doubt, have frequent occasions again to allude to it.
The fact is, that the ornamentation of the later examples of the
Romanesque style is for the most part rather Byzantine than Roman in its
origin: even the acanthus-leaves in the capitals and cornices more
resembling those of the monument of Lysicrates than those of any Roman
building; while the surface ornaments--so profusely used--are often
traceable to the patterns of the various manufactures of the East, so
largely imported into Western Europe.
Much light has recently been thrown upon the Byzantine style, especially
in respect of its secular productions, through the discovery by the
Count de Vogüé of a vast number of ruined towns in the mountains of
Central Syria, which have remained almost untouched (except by time and
earthquakes) just as they were deserted in the seventh century on the
approach of the first Mahometan invaders. These remarkable remains give
us the connecting link between Classic and Mediæval art, though greatly
influenced by the traditional mode of building belonging to Syria. It is
a subject which would need a separate lecture to deal with it as it
deserves, and I only mention it here for the sake of saying that the
carved ornamentation of these remarkable buildings is Greek in its
feeling,[1] and not Roman, and that it is evidently allied to that
imported at a much later period into Western Europe; and which
especially characterises the buildings of the twelfth century in France,
and (though less constantly) in England; all tending to establish the
essential unity of the round-arched architecture of the early Middle
Ages, and the fact that the East and the West were much more united in
artistic affinity than has generally been admitted.
My main object at the present time is to trace the history, and
investigate the character of those branches of this great round-arched
style which have developed themselves in our own country: and my purpose
in the foregoing remarks has been to lead you to view our own
architecture, not as an essentially separate style, but as a part of
that which pervaded Christian Europe, and extended till the Mahometan
invasion, far both into Asia and Africa, which was the nucleus even of
the Mahometan styles, and which in Sicily (as in the Holy Land and in
Spain) again met and coalesced with its infidel offshoot, and produced
by this reunion the noble architecture of Palermo, and other cities of
Northern Sicily.
Among all the races of Northern Europe, who were either conquered by
Rome, or aided in the overthrow of her empire, I do not know that any
has left a vestige of what may be viewed as indicating, in any
intelligible manner, the previous existence among them of a distinctive
style of architecture. Stonehenge and the cromlechs can hardly be viewed
as exceptions; and, when the Angles and Saxons invaded Britain, they
found, so far as we know, no architecture but the Roman, nor brought
with them any of their own; while, to make matters worse, they seem to
have devoted themselves to the destruction of what they found.
What was the character of their buildings while they continued Pagan, we
have no means of judging. We have proofs that timber was their most
customary material, though it would be unreasonable to suppose that they
were unable to build in stone. It is likely enough that their houses
were generally of wood, for such was the case throughout the Middle
Ages, and continues to be so to this day, where timber is abundant. Many
of the churches afterwards were of the same material; but such also has
at all periods been the case when dictated by local circumstances, and
is still frequent in our colonies, so that it is insufficient to
disprove the contemporary use of stone.
There is a curious parallelism in this respect between the buildings of
ancient Greece, of Etruria, and of England. In Greece we find clear
proofs of the architectural style having been founded on timber
construction, though the Cyclopean walls, etc., of the primæval cities
(whether the works of the same or a different race) forbid the thought
that the use of stone was ever unknown. In Etruria we find no less
gigantic walls, though we learn from Vitruvius that timber entered
largely even into the construction of their temples, and suggested the
peculiarities of the Tuscan order. If, then, in Saxon England we find
the words “_to build_” to be derived from _timber_;--if we learn from
early writers that the majority of their buildings were of wood; and if
we find in their stone buildings indications of their imitating the
construction of timber framing, we need no more conclude that our
forefathers were ignorant of stone building, where it was needful, than
that the early Greeks or Etrurians used timber from ignorance of the use
of stone.
They were colonists, though conquerors. They were, no doubt, but very
partially civilised; and, settling down as strangers in a country from
which they had driven out the old inhabitants, and whose towns they had
in great measure destroyed, they were likely (as colonists do in our own
day) to make the largest use of the material most ready to their hand,
and to defer to more settled times the use of a more permanent manner of
building.
The paucity of remains of buildings of the period between the
dissolution of the Roman Empire in the West and the eleventh century, is
by no means peculiar to our own country. Throughout Northern Europe the
same fact prevails. The earlier waves of northern invaders were absorbed
in the old civilisation, but each successive wave made a deeper and a
deeper inroad into the remaining arts of the old world. It was natural
then, that, on the return of art and civilisation, the works of this
dark period should be deemed unworthy of preservation, and were replaced
by new erections. In our own country the Romans had not been overcome,
but had simply withdrawn, so that the dissolution of art was a more
rapid work than in most other parts of the old empire, while the early
efforts of the Saxons were over and over again destroyed by the yet
uncivilised and unchristianised Scandinavians, from the last of whose
devastations there was hardly time to recover before the Anglo-Saxon
monarchy was overthrown by the Normans. No wonder, then, that the
conquerors, though but then become adepts in architecture themselves,
should disdainfully reconstruct nearly all the churches and greater
edifices of their predecessors in that new manner of building in which
they had been so recently instructed, and for the carrying out of which
their conquest had supplied them with such ample means.
It would be a curious and interesting investigation to trace out the
history of what may be styled the Primitive Romanesque architecture of
Northern Europe; or, in other words, to examine into the style of
building which prevailed during the long interval between the overthrow
of the Roman power in the fifth century and the final establishment of
that family of nations which for the last eight or nine centuries has
been the embodied representative of Europe.
The thousandth year of our era seems as if it were the beginning of a
new state of things: as if what succeeded it were in the open daylight,
while the six preceding centuries could only be viewed by the glimmer of
twilight. This is especially the case as regards our own art. How little
do we know of the architecture of Western Europe, north of the Alps,
during that long interval! Only here and there a building equally
obscure in character and date,--a dull ray of light only just sufficing
to render the darkness visible. No doubt a careful investigation would
increase the number of known examples on the Continent. At present they
are but few, such as the Basse-œuvre at Beauvais; the Church of St. Jean
at Poictiers; that of Quenqueville in Normandy; the church at Lorsch, on
the Rhine, and the older parts of St. Pantaleon at Cologne; all of which
possess a character so distinct from that which prevails among the
buildings of succeeding times as quite to sever from all which followed
the architecture of these primitive ages,--this gulf which divides the
ancient from the modern world.[2] Our business, however, at present, is
not with the Continent, but with the sister islands of Britain.
The circumstances of the various portions of the British Isles differed
in those early times so much one from another, that it is difficult to
view them at all systematically. South Britain, early overspread with
Roman art, civilised and Christianised, while Scotland and Ireland were
yet barbarous and Pagan, became again, in its turn, both Pagan and
barbarous when Ireland and Scotland had received the light of
Christianity and civilisation.
Early in the fifth century these blessings had been conveyed to Ireland
from then Christian Britain, and in the next century South Britain was
sunk in almost impenetrable darkness, and was subsequently beholden to
Ireland and the Irish race dwelling in Scotland, on the one side, and to
missionaries from Rome on the other, for rekindling the extinguished
lamp of religion and knowledge.
Of all the churches which must have existed in what is now England when
inhabited by the old Britons, I am not sure that we possess a single
relic; nor is there any certainty that even in Wales or Cornwall, where
they were comparatively undisturbed, the case is much better. More
curious still is the scarcity of early buildings in Scotland; though I
shall be able to show you that some exceptions exist. Bede speaks of
timber building as the “_Mos Scotorum_” and of stone building as “_Mos
Britonibus insolitus_,” which may account for this dearth of objects of
high antiquity. However this may be, we have to look mainly to Ireland
for relics of the early modes of building among the British races; and
here we happily find much to gratify our curiosity.
It was early in the fifth century that Patricius or St. Patrick (who
describes himself as at once a Briton and a Roman), went from the
northern parts of Roman Britain to instruct the then Pagan Irish, or, as
they were more generally called, Scots. It was about the time when the
invasion of Alaric had compelled the Emperor Honorius to withdraw his
legions from Britain; and was, consequently, at the precise moment when
our country was about to pass from the age of Roman subjection into that
of mythic confusion,--beginning with the frightful devastations of the
Picts and Scots, and subsequently of the Saxons; passing on through the
semi-fabulous days of Vortigern, King Arthur, and Merlin, and ending
with the flight of Cadwallader from desolated Britain; the driving out
of the ancient inhabitants; the destruction of Christian churches and
Roman cities, and the re-establishment of Paganism.
As there seems good reason to believe that, among the existing remains
in Ireland, some are actually of the age of St. Patrick, it follows that
in them we possess remains two centuries earlier than any left us by our
own Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and that their type may be founded on that
of the lost British buildings, though no doubt far humbler in scale and
mode of building than those erected in South Britain with Roman aid. The
Early Irish remains are mainly of three classes: the cells and other
domestic buildings of the monks: the oratories and churches; and the
round towers. The former class are of the rudest and most ascetic
description, and seem to be founded on the customary dwellings of the
Pagan inhabitants. The monks evidently eschewed all pretensions to
personal comfort, and took up at once with the scale of dwelling common
among their flock. They lived in stone huts, built without mortar, and
vaulted over; more like ovens than human habitations, and so small as
only to be sufficient for one person. With these they surrounded their
churches, adding a few buildings, similar in character but somewhat
larger, for more general purposes. Some, even of their oratories, were
almost as pristine in their construction; and the churches themselves,
though less rude, were of the most severe simplicity.
The form of dwelling indicated by the Cells or “Kills” which I have
alluded to is not wholly alien to that still existing (or at least in
use at the commencement of the present century) in the distant island of
St. Kilda, excepting that the cells were for one person while the St.
Kilda houses are for a family. Dr. Edward Daniel Clark thus describes
these houses in 1797:--“The construction of their dwelling-houses
differs from that of all the western islands. They consist of a pile of
stones without cement, raised about 3 feet or 4 feet from the ground,
forming a small oblong enclosure, over which is raised a covering of
straw, bound together with transverse ropes of bent.... Round the walls
of their huts are one or more arched apertures, according to the number
of the family, leading to a vault, like an oven, arched with stone, and
defended strongly from the inclemency of the weather; in this they
sleep. I crawled on all-fours, with a lamp, into one of these, and found
the bottom covered with heath; in this, I was informed, four persons
slept. There is not sufficient space in them for a tall man to sit
upright, though the dimensions of these vaulted dormitories varied in
each hut, according to the number it was required to contain, or the
industry of the owners.”
The central apartment he describes as without either chimney or window,
but with two holes, some 7 inches square, to let out a little of the
peat smoke.
There exists in the greater island of Arran, in the Bay of Galway, among
many primæval antiquities, a house (Fig. 193), supposed to be of the
Pagan period, which is thus described by Mr. Petrie, in his admirable
work on the _Ancient Architecture of Ireland_:--“It is in its internal
measurement 19 feet long, 7 feet 6 inches broad, and 8 feet high, and
its walls are about 4 feet thick. Its doorway is but 3 feet high, and 2
feet 6 inches wide on the outside, but narrows to 2 feet on the inside.
The roof is formed, as in all buildings of this class, by a gradual
approximation of stones laid horizontally, till it is closed at the top
by a single stone; and two apertures in the centre served the double
purpose of a window and a chimney.”
[Illustration: Fig. 193.--Stone House, Arran.]
The cells of the monks differed but little from this, excepting in being
quadrangular within, though round or oval without. It would appear that
some of the Irish monasteries had whole towns of such insulated cells,
and it was from the great number of these erected by St. Columba that
his name received the affix of “Kill,” and which caused his famous
foundation in Iona to be called “I Colmkill.”
The earlier oratories seem frequently to have been a development of the
construction of these cells, “built of uncemented stones admirably
fitted to each other, and their lateral walls converging from the base
to their apex in curved lines.”
[Illustration: Fig. 194.--Oratory of St. Gallerus.]
These pristine oratories are surrounded by the cells and the graves of
their founders and occupants, the latter inscribed with the cross. I
give, from Mr. Petrie, a sketch of the oratory of St. Gallerus (Fig.
194), which he describes as, externally, 23 feet long by 10 feet broad,
and 16 feet high to the external apex. It has a small doorway in the
west end, and is lighted by a single window in the east end, which east
gable was finished by a cross. Of very similar construction are several
in Scotland and the Western Isles. Of these I have been enabled to give
some illustrations, which are, in one respect, more complete than Mr.
Petrie’s drawings, inasmuch as they are furnished with plans (Figs. 195,
196, 197).
[Illustration: Fig. 195.--Elevation of south side, and Plan of Teampull
Sula Sgeir, Scotland.]
[Illustration: Fig. 196.--Interior, west end, and Plan of Teampull Rona,
Scotland.]
[Illustration: Fig. 197.--Teampull Beaunachadh, Scotland. The Chapel of
St. Flann, in the Flannan Isles.