3G 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 mediaeval 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 



