On this subject, Mr. Freeman has introduced sonic very reasonable remarks, we take the liberty of inserting : "1 certainly think this," says he, "one of the strongest cases in favour of the existence, not only of buildings older than the Norman conquest, but of the existence of a distinct Anglo-Saxon style—two questions which ought never to be confused together in the way that they too often have been. 'Fe this subject I shall presently recur. In this IVer case, we have Norman work, and something older. There is no possibility of mistake ; we have the marked finniliar Norman work of the twelfth century, introduced into an older build ing piece of architectural history can be more certain than that these arches are more recent than the wall in which they are inserted, and the window whose mutilation they have caused. There is no room for any question as to chronological sequence. The only possibility is, that they might he lute Norman arches. cut through an early Norman wall. Mr. Scott, however, thinks that tilt; northern piers and arches were probably erected about the year 1100.' With every deference to so eminent an authority, I should have placed them rather later, as the bases of the responds certainly seem to me too advanced for that date. But even putting the Norman work later in the century, we still have the fact, that the earlier work is not at all like early Norman, or Norman at all. There is this a priori objection to its being since 1006; while against its being of Anglo-Saxon date, there is nothing but the disinclination that exists in some minds to admit anything to be Anglo-Saxon. And though it would prove nothing against documentary evidence or strong architectural presumption, still, without such evi dence or presumption, we should be shy of supposing such frequent reconstructions of such magnitude in an obscure village-church, as would be involved in the supposition that we have here. two pure Norman dates ; for though I should place the arches later than Mr. Scott does, they arc certainly pure Norman, and not transitional, the case is briefly this : we have unmistakeable Norman work: we have also some thing else, at once earlier in date and different in character. The inference seems unavoidable.
"I observed above, that the questions of Saxon date and Saxon style are quite distinct. The real question is, whether the English, before the Conquest, possessed a na tional style distinct from Norman, in the same sense as other forms of Romanesque are distinct from it. in this sense, it does not prove a building to be Norman, to show that it was built after 1066; or to be Saxon, that it was built before Edward the Confessor. Certainly Harold himself' not im probably built in the Norman style before that period ; and, in obscure places, one cannot doubt but that Saxon churches were built for some time after. Even St. Alban's abbey is in many respects distinctly Saxon in character ; and I am well pleased to find these filets taken up under this aspect in Mr. Parker's newly published Introduction to Gothic Archi tecture.' He there says, that the ordinary parish churches which required rebuilding (soon after the Conquest) must have been left to the Saxons themselves, and were probably built in the same manner as before, with such slight improve ments as they might have learned in the Norman works.' Ile
then goes on to mention—I presume from historical evi dence—the Saxon churches of Lincoln as having been built after the Conquest, by the English inhabitants, dispossessed of their dwellings in the upper city by William and Bishop Remigius. No fact could be more acceptable to the believers in a distinct Saxon style. if the Englishmen of Lincoln con tinued—even when the Norman cathedral was rising imme diately over their heads—to build in a manner, not ditrering merely as ruder work from more finished, but having essen tially distinct characters of its own : the inference is irre sistible, that this was but the continuation of a distinct style, which, in those larger edifices, which have been almost wholly lost to us, would probably present distinctive features still more indisputable. The mere chronological proof of any existing building being older than the Conquest, would never have half the same value as such a testimony as this, which represents Saxon and Norman architecture co-existing in antagonistic juxtaposition. The fact is, however, only the same as we fmd to a greater or less extent, at every change of style. At all such transitional periods, we find not only every intermediate style, but the simultaneous use of the two styles, each in a state of tolerable purity. And the circumstances which attended the change from Saxon to Norman architecture, would naturally tend to make this phenomenon more conspicuous than in subsequent tran sitions. This change was no native development ; it was the innovation not only of foreigners, but of conquerors and oppressors ; and, whilst national honour might require, the circumstances of the time would compel, the rude and obscure structures which still continued to be raised by Englishmen, to adhere in all respects to the native precedents of better times. Wealth, art, ecclesiastical influence, and munificence. were all enlisted on the side of their tyrants." The tower of Earls-Barton church in Northamptonshire, as well as that of Barton-upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, bear marks of great antiquity, and are ascribed by Mr. Britton to the Anglo-Saxons. Both are evidently much older than the church to which they belong, which are good specimens of the Norman style. Nothing, Mr. Britton observes, can be found more resembling the towers now under notice, than the architectural drawings in certain manuscripts of acknow ledged Saxon origin. In the British Museum, and in the Gregorian Gospels preserved in the library of' Salisbury Cathedral, arc drawings by Anglo-Saxon scribes, in which the triangular arch and columns, resembling balusters with two or three bands, are represented, and seem to be rude delineations of architectural members, very similar to those in the towers of the two Bartons and Barneek, in Northamp tonshire, in which they are employed.