8 4 



bnildings were commonly recognised as of a peculiar construc- 

 tion, which had come to be designated as the Scotic manner ; 

 that one peculiarity of the Scotic method consisted in the ma- 

 terials employed, which were not stone and mortar, but wood 

 and earth; and that a quadrangular building was a great novelty 

 in early times. Mr. Workman held the small solid-roofed 

 church to be the earliest type of ecclesiastical building. Its 

 average size was sixteen feet by ten feet ; it was destitute of 

 ornament, and of a stern simplicity. It had one door and one 

 window, and in it the distinction between nave and chancel is 

 still unknown. There is an extreme rudeness of form, for 

 many of these churches are built of dry stone, without cement 

 of any kind. 



Mr. Workman undertook to show the gradual transition from 

 the round cell of pagan times to this primitive chapel, and ex- 

 hibited drawings of chapels in which the corners had been 

 rounded off so as to make the ground plan approach the circular 

 form, and the walls had been made to converge from the very 

 ground till they met in an arching roof. He held that in such 

 instances we actually find the pagan cell passing over and being 

 transformed into the rectangular perpendicular-walled chapel. 

 We have thus pushed back our inquiry till we touch pagan times, 

 and cannot doubt that we have in these single chambered 

 churches the primitive type of Irish Christian sanctuary. 



In regard to the round towers, Mr. Workman held it had 

 been established that they were belfries and places of refuge, 

 and believed they were erected about the tenth and eleventh 

 centuries. Endeavouring to show how the idea of the round 

 tower had originated, he pointed out that the peculiar features 

 which distinguished it, its circular form and solid pointed roof, 

 lay ready to hand, and were familiar in the monastic rath. 

 The beehive cell suggested the round form, and the solid pointed 

 roof of the primitive chapel only required to be raised in the 

 air and placed upon the summit of the lengthened column. 

 When the ravages of the Danes made them feel the need of a 

 temporary defence, it was the most natural thing in the world 

 that, taking the circular foundation of a cell as the ground plan, 



