BRADBOURNE CHURCH. 73 



what date the head and jambs of the window really are, I leave 

 an open question. And you will also see that the great south 

 doorway of the tower is an insertion. It has obviously been 

 removed, and was no doubt originally the principal entrance to 

 the Norman nave (B. on Plan). The masonry in its immediate 

 vicinity has a tendency upwards in its courses, that no Norman 

 waller, regularly working, would have made ; and the change, 

 which is a very interesting chapter in the history of the church, 

 would be more apparent were it not for the rampant vampire ivy 

 which in some extraordinary way has secured the affections of the 

 people. 



There is nothing to tell us what the Norman windows of the nave 

 were like, but we fortunately know exactly the width and length 

 of the nave from the straight joint at each end of the south aisle, 

 and the Norman masonry which turns the corners (C. on Plan.) 

 These happy accidents happen sometimes. It is not easy to 

 understand why the Norman builders, in reconstructing the tower 

 and nave, mainly, as I take it, from old foundations, made so 

 feeble a junction of the tower with the nave at the south-east 

 corner. It may be that, not wanting the beginning of the Saxon 

 nave wall here (see dotted lines D. D.) for a stair or other 

 purpose, they carried the new tower wall through, and, in fact, 

 they blundered then as men often do now, and perhaps they 

 thought no one would find out what a measured plan has revealed 

 to us. No doubt we are indebted to the Cauceis family for all 

 this Norman work, and with further regard to it we may also have 

 no doubt that the tower was carried up to the characteristic 

 Norman corbel table by them, and no further. A genuine 

 Norman battlement on a church is, I believe, unknown, but they 

 did finish their keeps of this period in this manner, but very 

 plainly, as Rochester shows, and the like rude character of work 

 survives in Irish towers of this and a later time. The Bradbourne 

 Norman probably finished his tower with a low pyramidal roof, 

 after the fashion of his own country, and covered the nave with 

 a pitched roof, masked inside, if he could afford it, by a flat 

 boarded ceiling like that at Peterborough. I have spoken of the 



