Visited by the Society im 1890. 271 
facility for procuring stone is accountable for the existence of north 
and south porches at the Bradford Church it is impossible to say, 
but there is no trace of porches at Manningford, though it is by no 
means improbable that they once existed here as at Bradford, although 
of wood, which was the usual building material of the period, and 
was doubtless abundant in this immediate neighbourhood. 
The adoption of the circular form of the apse, in preference to 
the more English form of the square end, as at Bradford (the only 
other difference in the plan of the two Churches), might have been 
partially due to the lack of stone for quoins (many early towers 
were built round for no other reason than this), though as the 
vertical courses at the commencement of the apse take the same 
quantity of freestone, this can hardly have been the sole cause. 
Now to proceed to a more particular description of Manningford 
Church. The first thing which strikes a person looking for Saxon 
work here is the absence of long-and-short work in the quvins—all 
the quoins being of the later flat-bedded type; but I do not attach 
much importance to this circumstance, considering the difficulty of 
procuring long stones here, and that long-and-short work does not 
invariably occur in other Saxon buildings (e., Steyning, Sussex), 
although it is the more usual kind of quoin. 
It will be noticed that the flint-work is laid in diagonal courses 
alternately sloping in opposite directions—called “ herring-bone ” 
work. Although this is found in Roman masonry, it is not of itself 
evidence of very early work, for I have met with it (as at Great 
Cheverell) down to the thirteenth century. I consider that this 
form of masonry was adopted more for convenience (to enable stones 
of irregular length and thickness to be laid in courses without 
cutting) than for ornament, and there can be no doubt that this 
Church—as was almost invariably the case in Saxon work—was 
plastered on the outside, and the axe marks to hold the plaster are 
still discernible on the quoins and windows. 
The total absence of the buttress is a definite mark of the early date 
of thisChurch. A further early characteristic is the absence of an east 
window. In a valuable paper on the Church by the late Dr. Baron, 
contributed to vol. xx. of the Wiltshire Archeological Magazine, he 
