160 



Notes on the Churches 



the date of about 1200 may be assigned to it. The north and west 

 walls of the nave o£ this early Church remain, as also the lower 

 part of the tower — in the former may be seen two small windows 

 and the remains of a door on the outside of the north wall ; and in 

 the tower I believe the semi-circular headed doorway on the north is 

 original, although concealed by plaster, and it retains the door 

 which was fitted to it in the fifteenth century, when the window 

 above it was inserted. The Norman buttresses of the west end of 

 the nave were incorporated with the later ones, and the distinction 

 between the early and late work may again be traced here in the 

 difference in grain of the stone. The chopped face of these older 

 stones would indicate that the Norman work was plastered on the 

 outside. The Norman Church, then, probably consisted of the 

 very usual arrangement (in small structures) of nave, chancel, and 

 central tower, without transepts. A south transept appears to have 

 been added at an early date — probably in the thirteenth century, 

 and traces can be seen of the buttresses and coping in the wall 

 outside. 



It is on record that there was an Early English chancel, but no 

 trace of it remains. 



There is no work of the fourteenth century to be seen in this 

 Church, but the building underwent great development a century 

 later. During this period the nave was remodelled, the tie-beam 

 roof of which still remains : the south aisle (which evidently was 

 given a span roof) and porch, with room over, and fan-vaulting, 

 part of which remains, were built. All this, however, is in the 

 ordinary work of the period, like that usually found in village 

 Churches : but the whole resources of wealth and art appear to have 

 been lavished on the re-modelling of the south transept and the 

 erection of the chapel by Richard Beauchamp, Lord S. Armand 

 (whose history we heard from Canon Jackson last evening), in 

 which he founded a chantry dedicated to S. Mary and S. Nicholas. 



This chapel, I would here mention, is line for line — even to the 

 minutest detail — the exact counterpart of the one on the south side 

 of the chancel of S. John's Church, Devizes, which is also probably 

 rightly attributed to the same founder, and both were apparently 



