THE DEVELOPIMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN ESSEX. 1 75 



4. Absence of buttresses, any projection from the face of the 

 work having more the character of a pier than a buttress. 



In the earlier examples of Norman doors, a stone lintel or arch 

 was introduced at the level of the springing, and the semicircular 

 head or tymphana, filled in with masonry, sometimes hatched as in 

 the north door of Tillingham Church. 



The walls of our churches of this period were generally three 

 feet thick, and sometimes even thicker. 



The quoins or corners of the buildings, especially of the churches, 

 were built square, either wiih Roman bricks or stone, and this is a point 

 to which I would specially direct your attention. If you come across 

 an ancient church with the nave and chancel walls carried up with 

 square quoins, you may infer that although the doors and windows 

 and roof have been altered, the walls themselves are of the Norman 

 period. Another feature of Norman work, but which requires con- 

 siderable experience to detect, is the mode of building the walls. They 

 seem to have been carried up in regular layers (I am now alluding to 

 walls built of pebbles and flints), so that the courses of pebbles can 

 be distinguished ^n the same way that we see the courses of bricks 

 in walls of that material. Rubble and pebble walls of a later period 

 seem to have been built in what is technically called " random work" ; 

 that is work where you cannot detect any regular coursed work. Of 

 course in many of these old Norman walls repairs have been carried 

 out which sometimes materially interfere with the original coursed 

 work. 



There does not appear to have been, at any rate in Essex much 

 variety in the design of the old Norman church. Sometimes, but very 

 rarely, they were built in the form of a cross. 



Sometimes the tower was introduced between the nave and the 

 chancel, as at Boreham. But more generally the church consisted of 

 a nave and chancel, sometimes with a tower at the west end, but 

 usually, I suspect, with a bellcot only, over the western bay of nave. 

 In this description of church there would probably be one or two, or 

 possibly three, semicircular headed windows at the west end, about 

 six inches wide and about two feet six inches high, with very slight 

 external reveal, but a very deep splay all round internally. On the 

 north and south sides would be, starting from the west end, a similar 

 narrow window, then a doorway, and then two other windows ; that 

 is, three windows and one doorway on either side. The chancel 

 would have two or three windows on either side, and one, two, or 



