Early Architecture in Great Britain--_continued_.
Architecture of the Normans--St. Stephen’s at Caen--Canterbury
Cathedral modelled on that of St. Stephen’s--Description of the
Norman church built by the Confessor at Westminster _before the
Conquest_--Instances of Anglo-Saxon architecture being used _after
the Conquest_--Characteristics of the Norman style--Varieties of
combination--Doors, windows, archways, arcades, and vaulting--Minor
details--Mechanical ideal of a great Norman church--Vast scale and
number of works undertaken by the early Norman builders.
My last lecture was rather antiquarian and historical than instructive
in any principles of art. It showed you how the Celtic inhabitants of
Ireland and Scotland worked out for themselves,--upon Romano-British
reminiscences, added to those of their own race,--a manner of building
which, though severely simple, was by no means to be despised; and also
how our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers went through a similar process,
working partly on the same foundations, but more directly on lessons
brought to them from Italy, though not always very well understood.
I might further have shown you (had it been my subject) how that both of
these races were far more successful in the more delicate arts of
embroidery, illuminated painting, and jewellery; and how little in their
practice of those decorative arts they trusted to any but their own
traditions.
I am not sure, too, whether in sculpture the pre-Norman English may not
have succeeded better than in architecture,--quaint and untechnical
though their productions were.
I fear, however, that we must admit that, in our own particular art of
architecture, we have little to learn from their buildings, however
interesting and quaintly picturesque; and that, though belonging to a
branch of the great round-arched family, they fail--almost of all
effort, certainly of any success--in developing that manner of building
into a style of art.
That fearful deluge, whose destructive waves swept with such
overwhelming fury over our land after the decease of the last--the
sainted--monarch of England’s older dynasty, may be likened to the
sudden breaking down of its banks by some mighty river, which, while it
sweeps from the earth the crops and the homesteads, leaving nothing but
devastation on its track, yet deposits, in subsiding, a film of foreign
substance upon the deluged soil, which adds to it a new productiveness,
and, in time, far more than compensates for the loss and havoc which
accompanied it.
So it was (at the least with architecture), after the Norman conquest.
The old manner of building which, during a course of nearly five
centuries, had failed to generate any development of a truly artistic
character, was swept once and for ever from the face of the earth, so
much so that some have denied its very existence; but there was
substituted for it a style which, if at first little less rude than its
predecessor, contained within itself the germs of a thoroughly sound
artistic system, which speedily germinated into a series of
developments, the most glorious which, perhaps, man has ever yet seen.
We have the clearest evidence, both from the statements of old writers,
and such as we derive from our own observation, that the style of
building introduced into England by the Normans, was viewed as a
distinctly new one--a “_novum genus compositionis_,” and in no degree as
a development of that which preceded it in this country.
How far the Norman style was distinct from the Romanesque of other parts
of the north of France is a question which it would be curious, though
difficult, to investigate. I think it might be shown that architecture,
both in France and other countries of Western Europe, made a sudden
forward start after the thousandth year of our era; possibly owing to
the relief experienced at finding the futility of the prevalent fears
that the world was to come to an end in that year. If such a
simultaneous impulse did take place, it would be especially felt by a
young and energetic race like the Normans, newly admitted into the
Christian European family, recently reclaimed from the savage barbarism
of Scandinavia, and grafted on to the old and comparatively civilised
stock of France. Unlike, too, the other portions of France, Normandy had
lost, in all probability, a large proportion of her ancient churches by
the devastation of this very race while yet pagan; and nothing would be
more natural than that, when Christianised, settled down, and instructed
in the arts of their new neighbour, they would feel a special impulse
towards repairing the effects of their own devastations, and would,
while doing so, take a vigorous course in developing the manner of
building in which they had been so newly instructed. I would not,
however, wish to claim for the Normans any great degree of originality
in architecture. Different districts of France each possessed their own
local variety of Romanesque, though all clearly of one family; and
Normandy, like the others, had its own variety, and that a vigorous one;
and to ourselves the most interesting, as having been transplanted into
our own country and become the parent of all our architectural
developments. What was the form of Romanesque which prevailed in
Neustria before it was overrun by the Northmen and transformed into
Normandy, I think we have no means of judging,[14] the relics of its
buildings being so few and fragmentary as to offer no distinct evidence;
but just as the converted Northmen in the days of Canute were in this
country the earnest restorers and builders of churches, so did those who
had settled in France become the vigorous promoters of the art which
they had once destroyed; while, by a remarkable coincidence, they were
the means of bringing over in a succeeding generation to those of their
own and kindred race in England the developments which they had
generated under more favourable circumstances and guidance in the
country which had for a century and a half adopted them into its own
family.
If, however, the more vigorous pursuit of the building arts in France
dates, as I have conjectured, from the opening of the eleventh century,
and was contemporary with the revived impulse in this country under
Canute, it follows that the mode of building introduced by the Normans
was not only to the English, but in reality, a _novum genus
compositionis_.
Quite in accordance with this is the character of what we call in this
country Early Norman. Had Norman architecture been fully matured before
its transplantation into England, we should not recognise its earlier
productions by evidences founded upon rudeness and immaturity; yet such
is unquestionably the case. Noble and vigorous as are the works of the
Normans of the early days of their occupation of England, they
undoubtedly bear evidences of an early and archaic stage of their form
of art; and, even in Normandy itself, we do not find buildings of great
architectural importance of dates much antecedent to those of the first
structures built by the invaders of England. Early Norman in England
would still be Early Norman, if in Normandy; so that we may consider the
style, though generated on French soil, to have run the greater part of
its course _pari passu_ in both countries.
The investigations made and recently published by M. Bouet, of Caen,
into the architectural history and changes of the abbey church of St.
Stephen, founded in that city by the Conqueror, fully bear out this
view, and show that the church, as built by William, was a very
different and much more archaic structure than that which we now see; a
large proportion of the more prominent features of which are proved to
be the overlayings of later, though still Romanesque, times.[15]
As it is not my purpose, generally, to illustrate my description of the
Norman style by its productions on its native soil, I shall select the
church just named as the _point de départ_, by means of which I shall
transfer my consideration of the style from Normandy to England. There
are several churches of earlier date than this, such as parts of the
abbey churches of Jumièges and Bernay,[16] but St. Stephen’s is clearly
the great connecting link. In the first place, it was built by the
Conqueror, and was in actual progress when he invaded England; and, in
the second place, Lanfranc, the first abbot of St. Stephen’s, which was
built under his direction, was also the first metropolitan of England
appointed under the Norman dynasty, and immediately on his assumption of
the see of Canterbury,--only four years after William’s arrival,--he
commenced the rebuilding of the cathedral (then lying in ruins), after
the almost precise design of his own abbey church at Caen. This abbey
church, then, at Caen, and the metropolitan church of England, were
built under the influence of the same monarch and at the same time; for,
though St. Stephen’s was first begun, it would appear that Canterbury
was finished first: they were built under the direction of the same
ecclesiastical head, and in all leading features were on the same
design, their plans being absolutely identical. The only difference of
importance was the existence at Canterbury of the crypt, on which the
choir was raised by many steps,--a reminiscence of the church built by
St. Augustine, described in my last lecture, while such did not exist at
St. Stephen’s. Both churches had naves of eight bays in length, in
addition to which both had a western façade, with two flanking towers.
The transepts of both churches were of two unequal bays, and the outer
bay of each had a gallery all across it, supported by a massive pillar
(as at Winchester); in each there was in both transepts an apsidal
chapel repeated on the triforium level; and though both have lost their
original choirs, the probability is that both were of two bays long,
with the addition of a simple apse. Professor Willis has shown that
their very dimensions were nearly identical.
It has been discovered that at St. Stephen’s the western towers were a
subsequent addition, though so early that little difference can be
observed in their details. I judge from this that the towers at
Canterbury were a deviation from the design of St. Stephen’s, which was
at once rectified by adding them to the prototypic building.
The piers of St. Stephen’s are oblong masses, divided at each end into
groups of three large shafts. To these are added, on the side facing the
nave, shafts, alternately single and triple, which ran up to the roof.
The triforium storey is almost a repetition, to a less height, of the
main arcade; though, where it passes the western towers, it is divided
into two sub-arches by a single shaft. Mr. Parker, whose excellent paper
on the subject will be found among the Transactions of the Institute of
British Architects, seems to think that the triforium floor was of
timber, and the aisle unvaulted. Professor Willis was under the
impression that it had had no floor, but that the two storeys were
united, as is now the case at Rochester. This, I think, seems disproved
by Mr. Parker’s paper, and by M. Bouet’s drawings, which show a doorway
opening into the triforium storey. This storey is at present vaulted
above with a half-barrel vault. This Mr. Parker thinks an addition; but
M. Bouet shows a remnant of it embedded in the east wall of the
transept, where the old choir aisle has been removed, which seems to
suggest its being original.
The greatest alteration which the older portions of the church have
undergone is the addition of vaulting to the nave and the entire
transformation of the design of the clerestory in a later Norman style,
which, to a casual observer, seems to work in so well with the older
parts as to appear original. M. Bouet and Mr. Parker have found the
remnants of the original arcade,--which were uniform in height and
incompatible with vaulting,--both in the nave and transepts, proving
that vaulting was not contemplated in the first erection.
I am, however, rather anticipating my history, and must fall back upon a
somewhat earlier period; for, though Canterbury Cathedral was probably
the first church erected in England after the Norman Conquest, it was
nevertheless by no means the first Norman church; for it was in a Norman
minster that the Conqueror had, full four years before the works at
Canterbury were begun, received at the hands of an English archbishop
the crown of England.
You will remember that as early as 1013 Ethelred and Emma, the parents
of King Edward the Confessor, had fled with their children from the fury
of King Sweyn to the court of Richard le Bon, duke of Normandy. It
followed that the education and tastes of the future king were Norman;
and long subsequently, after he ascended the throne, England so swarmed
with Normans as not only to excite discontent but to give occasion to
civil war. It was, then, natural that, when King Edward determined
(about 1050) to refound the Abbey of Westminster, he should adopt for
his new work a Norman rather than an English design. We accordingly find
it spoken of by William of Malmesbury (writing in the following century)
as “That church which he, the first in England, had erected in that mode
of composition which now nearly all emulate in its costly expenditure.”
Matthew Paris,--a century later,--says that Edward “was buried in the
church which he had constructed in that new mode of composition from
which many of those afterwards constructing churches, taking example,
had emulated it in its costly expenditure.” These notices by men of whom
the one knew most, and the other might have known all, of the Norman
churches in England, are sufficient to prove the Confessor’s church to
have been not of Anglo-Saxon but of Norman architecture; and, as they
thought, the earliest of its style in this country.
Whether that erected by Earl Harold at Waltham, and consecrated in 1060,
was in the same style, we cannot ascertain. His proclivities were
certainly not Norman, yet he may have adopted the fashion just coming
into vogue, though we find that other churches built nearly as late, and
some even subsequent to the Conquest, still retained the older and more
national character.
The church built by the Confessor at Westminster is thus described by a
contemporary writer:--
“The house (_domus_) of the principal altar, constructed with very lofty
vaultings, is compassed round with squared (stone) work uniformly
jointed: the aisle[17] around the building itself is shut off by a
double tier of arches from either side, the continuity of the work being
firmly consolidated in every direction.
“Further, the cross (crossing) of the temple which would enclose the
choir of those singing the praises of God in its midst, and by its
two-fold support on either side would sustain the lofty apex of the
central tower, rises at first simply with a low and massive vaulting; it
then swells out with several staircases, skilfully ascending with many
windings; then, with a plain wall, it runs up to the roof, which is of
wood, carefully covered with lead.
“Below, however, and above are arranged in order chapels (_domicilia_),
which are to be consecrated through their altars in commemoration of
apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins.
“This multiplicity of a work so vast was, however, begun at such a
distance from the east of the ancient temple, that even some part of the
nave which was to lie between them, intervened with ample space, lest
the brothers occupying it should be interrupted from the service of
Christ.”
Another contemporary writer describes the church as “upheld by diverse
columns, and vaulted everywhere with multiplicity of arches.”