43 SOME FURTHER NOTES ON BURTON ABBEY PLAN. 
but I think it more likely to have been after the King made it the 
Parish Church, and robbed it of all its endowments; and it was found 
less expensive to lower the roof, because the material would be all 
there to do it, and some to spare, than to pierce the walls, and insert 
windows in the aisles. 
Now let us look carefully again at Rochester. Note the nave 
arcade columus—if continued upwards would meet the main piers of 
the triforium arcade, and that the openings of the clerestory are 
formed over the piers of the triforium; also, that the clerestory 
windows, which I am sorry my view does not give clearly, are of two 
lights, the spandril pierced with a quaterfoil. Hollar shows this, 
but the clerestory at Burton seems earlier than at Rochester, for 
from the round-headed arch I should say it was transitional. Hollar 
also shows a flat roof over the nave. We have the date of this: 
John Sudbury, 20th Abbot, 1400-1424, roofed the lower Church, 
and flat roofs were then in vogue. 
Looking once more at Rochester, we see what that flat roof was 
like inside, and also notice that at the second pier from the crossing 
there is a change from the Norman round arch to the pointed; and 
I think here again we should have something similar at burton after 
the Tower fell, and was rebuilt in Abbot Field’s time; but here it 
would be at the fifth column. So we may say, with very good 
confidence, the South side certainly of the nave of Burton Old 
Church was very like Rochester nave. There is one thing, however, 
the West front of Burton was very little like Rochester. At 
Rochester we find a large perpendicular window. At Burton, 
Hollar shows a group of three windows of two lights each, long and 
slender with pointed main arch and cusped heads, the spandril pierced 
with a quaterfoil. 
I will conclude with a question about which, perhaps, some of you 
may be able to help me. I had a cutting sent me from the “ Burton 
Guardian,” by which I see you have been keeping the Nine Hundredth 
Anniversary of the foundation of Burton’s Mother Church of 
S. Modwen. Are you nota little too previous? I thought that the 
foundation of Burton Abbey was 1004. 
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