CHAPTER II.SAXON ARCHITECTURE.
Sofew and indistinct are the traces of architectural art in England before the Norman Conquest, that for a long time it was a moot point among antiquaries whether or not any such thing existed as true Saxon architecture. The question may now be considered as settled in the affirmative. In his last edition, Rickman enumerates twenty churches in which fragments are found which certainly belong to the pre-Norman period, though no complete example can be pointed to as illustrating the style then prevalent. Since Rickman’s death ten to fifteen more specimens have been discovered. Generally they are towers or crypts, as St. Winifred’s at Ripon, or the pillars of a chancel-arch, as at Reculver. Sometimes it is a doorway, at others only a piece of rude walling. On a review of the whole, it is evident that architecture in England was certainly ruder and less developed than that on the Continent at the same age; both were, of course, based on the Roman art which preceded them; but, owing probably to our insular position, the attempted reproduction of Roman work was of so barbaric a character as to have suggested at first a wooden origin for some of the features. Mr. G.G. Scott, however, in his essay on the history of ‘English Church Architecture’ (1871), says: “What we term Saxon architecture is inreality but an English version of the contemporary art of Italy with which the Roman missionaries and their successors were well acquainted, and which they endeavoured with imperfect success to naturalize here.” On this subject Mr. Scott says, p. 42: “There is no feature more characteristic of Saxon architecture than the use of rude pilaster strips. The imitation of the mode of bonding of such pilasters, in the construction of groins, and in the jambs of doorways and other openings, constitutes what is known as ‘long and short work.’ This has sometimes been supposed to be a tradition of wooden construction. It is certainly nothing of the kind. It represents simply the manner in which a classic pilaster is ordinarily constructed as distinguished from the mediæval method of forming a quoin.” It should be observed also that the method of placing upright posts of timber at intervals for the sake of economy in filling in between, with brick-nogging or forming plaster surfaces or battens, is a much later type of construction; the earliest timber churchin existence (and it is doubtful if that was built before Norman times), viz., Greensted Church, Essex, is constructed of huge balks of timber placed side by side, and is entirely unlike the disposition of the upright bands of stone found in Saxon work. Triangular heads to doorways and windows are found in St. Jean of Poitiers, in St. Front at Périgueux, and elsewhere in France, “where the scientific mode of the construction and the perfection of the details, forbid us to attribute it to the habit of building in wood.” The baluster shafts also, Mr. Scott suggests, were copied from Roman balusters. The projecting hood-mould over doorway and window openings, which is not an independent ring of masonry as in Norman and Gothic work, is copied from the outer moulding of the Roman archivolt. In fact, as Mr. Scott observes, p. 43: “Our ruder Saxon churches exhibit, in however crude a form, the principles of a style distinctly arcuated—a style, that is, of which the typical forms are determined by scientific masonry. However rude and even barbarous in execution they may be, they are not rightly termed even debased Roman.” “They exhibit a purely arcuated style, true in its science, however imperfect in its art.”
799. Tower of Earl’s Barton Church. (From Britton’s ‘Architectural Antiquities.’)
799. Tower of Earl’s Barton Church. (From Britton’s ‘Architectural Antiquities.’)
799. Tower of Earl’s Barton Church. (From Britton’s ‘Architectural Antiquities.’)
800. Windows, Earl’s Barton. (From Britton.)
800. Windows, Earl’s Barton. (From Britton.)
800. Windows, Earl’s Barton. (From Britton.)
801. Saxon Doorway at Monkwearmouth. (From a Photograph.)
801. Saxon Doorway at Monkwearmouth. (From a Photograph.)
801. Saxon Doorway at Monkwearmouth. (From a Photograph.)
Although interesting to English antiquaries, the specimens of Saxon art are so insignificant as hardly to deserve much notice in a universal history of the art, and one or two examples will suffice to explain the peculiarities of the style. The tower of Earl’s Barton in Northamptonshire contains in itself more undoubted Saxon characteristics than any other specimen yet described: its angles, as shown inWoodcut No.799, are constructed with that peculiar form of quoin known as “long and short,” while its faces are ornamented by long pilaster-like slips connected by semicircular arches or more frequently by straight-lined cross-bracing which might be regarded as wooden in its character were it not for the through bond stones which mark their junction. The windows (Woodcut No.800) are formed by gouty balusters, looking very much as if they were turned in a lathe, and the whole arrangements bear out that character. Even more characteristic of the style than this, is the doorway under the tower of the church at Monkwearmouth in Durham (Woodcut No.801). There seems no doubt but that it is part of the church which Benedict Biscop erected there in the 7th century. According to the chronicles, when he was enabled by the liberality of King Ecgfrid to found a monastery there, he went, in 674, to Gaul to procure masons who could erect it in the “Roman manner” that is, in imitation of the basilicas in Rome. The twined serpents with birds’ beaks, on the right doorpost, are, as we know from manuscripts of that age, singularly characteristic of the style, but not, so far as I know, found elsewhere engraved in stone on a church door. Though quaint and interesting to the antiquary, it must be confessed there is not much grace or beauty in any feature ofthe style, or even an approach to grandeur of dimensions in any example which has been spared to the present day.
Had any great conventual church or cathedral survived we might perhaps be forced to modify this opinion:[95]but the only one of which we know anything is that which was erected at Canterbury by Archbishop Odo in the years 940-960, to replace the older church of St. Augustine.[96]Even this, however, we only know from the description of Edmer, the singer, who saw it before it was destroyed by fire in 1067. Like the German churches of that age, it seems to have had two apses. The principal one, towards the east, was appropriated to the clergy; while the western one belonged to the laity, or, as we should now say, was devoted to parochial purposes.
Its walls and structure probably resembled the nave of Montier-en-Der (Woodcut No.610), or the Basse Œuvre at Beauvais (Woodcut No.608)—plain piers supporting round arches below, and small circular-headed windows in a plain wall above.
Outside the original church of St. Augustine to the eastward—at what distance we unfortunately are not told—Cuthbert, the second archbishop, about the year 750 erected a second church, “as a baptistery, and in order that it might serve as the burying-place of future archbishops;”[97]thus combining the two rites in a ceremonial church apart from the basilica, exactly as was done in Italy during the Romanesque age. It is by no means improbable that the eastern termination of the present cathedral known as Becket’s Crown stands on the site of this old baptistery, and retains its dimensions; but it is difficult to prove this, so completely have all the features of the church been altered by subsequent rebuildings.
From what we know of Saxon MSS. and other indications, it would seem that painting was a favourite mode of decoration among the Saxons; and if so, their interiors may have been more successful as works of art than their external architecture would lead us to expect. But as no specimen of Saxon painted mural decoration has come down to our time, it is hardly safe to assume much with regard to this.