DATE OF MELBOURNE PARISH CHURCH. 87 



internally on all four sides with tier above tier of round headed 

 arcading — ^Melbourne having three tiers, Norwich four — and in 

 each the galleries are continued through the lowest tier of 

 arcading, so as to afford passage to the upper parts of the Church 

 eastward. 



The Domesday Record states that there was then (a.d. 1084 to 

 1086) " in Meleburn a Priest and a Church." May not the present 

 Church be, /// the main, that so mentioned ? Buildings resembling 

 Melbourne Church were being erected in Western Europe as early 

 as A.D. 1000. {See Lubke's '''■ Ecclesiastical Art" pp. 17 et seq.) 



The plan of Melbourne Church is precisely that of the simplest 

 type of "Romanesque Basilica " figured by Lubke, p. 15. Its 

 longitudinal section is' also mainly of the same type as in Lubke's 

 work, having the two storeyed western portico, but differing in 

 having a two storeyed chancel * (instead of a single high chancel), 

 and in having triforium galleries, combined with a clerestory, 

 instead of a simple clerestory. With these exceptions, Melbourne 

 Church appears to belong to the most severe and most primitive 

 type of '■ Romanesque Basilica." 



It is true that Dr. Whewell, in his "Architectural Notes on 

 German Churches " (3rd edition, 1842, p. 106), observes that " in 

 the finest early Romanesque buildings in Germany the space over 

 the pier arches and under the clerestory windo\j;s is left a blank, 

 and in England in Norman buildings that space is filled by a row 

 of openings or panellings of various kinds, which is mostly a 

 merely ornamental member, and not applied to any customary 

 use " ; and that " the churches which have an open gallery forming 

 a second storey to the side aisle (the Manner chor) belong to the 

 Early German class, i.e., the latter part of the twelfth century. 



With respect to the triforium in Melbourne Church, it is to be 

 remarked that it is combined with the clerestory, and serves to 

 transmit and spread the light of the windows in the latter. It 

 must be regretted that Dr. AVhewell, if he ever visited Melbourne 



* An admirable example of a two storeyed Norman chancel may be seen at 

 Compton, near Guildford, Surrey. — Ed, 



