36 Opening Address to the Section of Architecture 
Burcombe, and though less certainly at Manningford Braose, where 
the east end is semi-circular instead of square, as is usual in English 
Churches anterior to the Norman Conquest, and Avebury. As far 
as I know no instance of the characteristic Anglo-Saxon towers, 
such as those at Earls Barton, Barton-on-Humber, Barnack, and in 
the city of Lincoln, occurs in Wiltshire. 
We hardly need to be reminded how intimate is the connection 
‘between the medieval Churches and the geological formation of the 
district to which they belong. The nature of the local building- 
material rules the architecture. There is an exception to the law 
where, as in parts of Lincolnshire and the adjacent low-lying district, 
water carriage was easy and inexpensive. Here we find an abun- 
dance of noble Churches, excellent in their stone work and unstinting 
in the richness of their design in a country which does not produce 
building stone of any description, the whole being brought on rafts 
or in bays from the quarries of Barnack and Ketton. But where 
there was no such facility of transport the builders were entirely 
dependent on local material, and the character of the Churches both. 
in form and detail is governed by it. The reason why we find 
round towers so common in Suffolk and Norfolk is that they could 
be-constructed of flint alone which was abundant, and had no angles 
to be strengthened with quoins of stone, which was rare. The 
same causes led to the invention of the elaborate patterns of black 
flint set in tracery of white stone which are so beautiful a feature in 
the East Anglian Churches. The variety of light and shade 
produced elsewhere by deeply-cut mouldings and recessed panels, 
when stone was scarce and thin and had to be used economically, 
was ingeniously given by contrasted colours in the same plane. The 
thatched roofs speak of a swampy district where slates were not 
and tiles were dear, while sedge and reeds might be had for cutting. 
A want of stone and abundance of pebbles has also given us the 
boulder-built Churches of the Sussex seaboard, while the wooden 
bell-turrets and shingled spires of the same county may be traced 
to the wide-spreading forests which covered its surface until the 
iron works which once had their seat there had consumed them all, 
and thus, fuel ceasing, put themselves out, The unmanageable 
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