ARCHITECTURAL STYLES IN FORDIXGTON CHURCH. 177 



pillars they intended to erect, down to just below the floor level. 

 They then set up the pillars on the old foundations, as at 

 Fordington, leaving the masonry of the wall intervening between 

 the pillars temporarily standing, to act as centres for the turning 

 of their arches on, and when the keystones were fixed and the 

 spandrels made good, the wall (remaining temporarily) was 

 removed; a very sensible way too, if they were short of the 

 necessary plant, material, wood centres, and shores necessary for 

 such work. This also would account somewhat for the 

 irregularity and want of trueness in the striking of the arcs of the 

 circles forming the arches. The spacing of the pillars is also 

 not equal ; this may have been in consequence of having to 

 avoid a door or window opening in the old wall. The wall 

 of the spandrels has spread outwards in the middle some four 

 inches, in consequence of the thrust of the roof, and the base of 

 the spandrel over the middle pier projects beyond the abacus of 

 the cap. 



The features of the pillars are these : The irregular shaped 

 pier is that of two responds, back to back (one of a later 

 period). The base is plain chamfered, and the impost on 

 the west side is that of a simple chamfered abacus. There is a 

 plain chamfer to the south-west angle, finished top and bottom 

 with characteristic Norman stops. 



The centre pillar is two feet in diameter above its base. On 

 removing the whitewash and repairing it, some pieces of a 

 painted alabaster image were taken out of a hole, about the size 

 of a small putlog hole, in the side of it. 



The lines of the plan of its base changed their form three 

 times. It. starts with a square bottom and then chamfers away 

 into an unequal-sided octagonal form, and is again weathered 

 with eight pointed and veined radiating leaves carved at each 

 angle, and finished at the top circular with a debased Attic 

 moulding. 



I have enquired of several masons and others the name of 

 the stone or the quarry or locality from whence it came, but 

 I could get nothing satisfactory. One went so far as to say it 



