382 By Rev. H. J. Bukinficld Astley, M.A., Litt. D., &c. 



" All these have this in common — and Bradford -on- A-Von is 

 outside the group — that they are distinguished by the absence of 

 certain features, which are common in Anglo-Saxon Churches 

 generally. We do not find in them long-and-short quoins, double 

 windows with midwall shafts, double-splayed lights, pilaster-strips, 

 strip-woi-k surrounding openings, or plinths ; nor, we may add, 

 internally-splayed loops of a tall narrow form. 



" The features mentioned were introduced about the tenth 

 century, at the epoch when most of them were coming into use in 

 post-Carolingian Germany . . . Will anyone now maintain 

 the theory that the Saxon pilaster-strips are copied from the half- 

 timbered work, and are not rather connected with the German 

 Lisenen ; ^ or that Saxon towers, more than 80 per cent, of which 

 are western towers, are derived from Italy, where the western 

 tower is almost unknown ; or that the windows were fetched by a 

 long journey from Italy, when we could have found them, and 

 found them, too, in icestern towers, just across the North Sea ? 

 Are we to claim double-splayed windows as our native invention, 

 or credit them to Italy or Gaul, where they are hardly found, when 

 we know that they were in abundant use in post-Carolingian 

 Austrasia, and were there employed just as they were employed 

 in England, in constant association with the other features men- 

 tioned above ? ^ 



' Yet we read : — " Still more characteristic are the long, narrow, lath- or 

 pilaster-like strips of stone joined by arches or straight braces, with which 

 the walls are decorated, which are unmistakably taken from wooden originals " 

 {Social England, vol. i., p. 288, 1900). And another, but still erroneous, idea 

 is put forth by Messrs. Banister Fletcher, m iheir Histori/ of Architecture, 

 p. 229, where they say : — " The masonry work is considered by some to show 

 the influence of wood architecture, as in the ' long-and-short ' work, the 

 triangular openings, and baluster muUion ; but these features are rather 

 rude attempts to copy the contemporary Romanesque work of Eavenna and 

 other Italian towns." 



^ " Double-splayed windows are of Austrasian origin, e.g., the Rotunda at 

 Fulda, 820; Niederzell, still earlier; St. Pantaleon, Cologne, 980."— 0?). ci7., 

 pp. 63 — 65. Yet the double-splayed window — a distinctly non-Norman 

 feature — occurs in what must be Norman work on the west side of the 

 cloisters at Norwich."— p. 82, and vide p. 331: — "The percentage of such 

 survivals is probably greatest in the East-Anglian region." 



