I have also alluded to the chapel in the Tower of London: of this most
perfect and typical example of the very early Norman, I exhibit some
illustrations. Severely plain, as befitted the chapel of a fortress, it
is, nevertheless, as complete and as well designed a building as could
well be produced. Apsidal, with continuous aisles, in two storeys, and
vaulted throughout the central space and the upper aisle by unribbed
wagon-vaults, becoming in the former case semi-domical on reaching the
apse, and the lower aisle groined, it is more perfect in ideal than the
choir of any English or Norman church that I am acquainted with of its
period, and is parallel in this respect with the great churches of
Auvergne, only needing the clerestory to render it a complete type; a
model of a perfect choir, with an entire absence (excepting in the
capitals of the columns) of ornamental detail. Several of these capitals
are like those which prevail in St. Etienne at Caen, and which appear in
Remigius’s work at Lincoln; they are a dim reminiscence of the
Corinthian capital, with a cross-formed block representing the rosette
in the abacus; for, be it always remembered, that the abacus of a
Corinthian capital was not the prototype of that of a Romanesque one, in
which a substantial impost is superimposed upon the delicate abacus of
the classic column. I give drawings from Caen (Fig. 248), from the Tower
(Figs. 245, 246, 247), and from Lincoln (Fig. 249), to explain the
identity and peculiar characteristics of these capitals. The common
cushion capital is also freely used.
[Illustration: Fig. 244.--St. John’s Chapel, Tower of London.