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XIII. ECCLESIASTICAL
ARCHITECTURE
fHE first
great age of English architecture begins with
T
the last years ofthe eleventh century and, compared with
the building then begun, the architecture ofthe Anglo/
Saxon age seems rather tentative and unformed. This is
not to its decry interest. England is fortunate compared with
other countries in northern Europe in the possession of smv
viving buildings ofthe early Dark Ages and though only one,
Brixworth, is of monumental scale, it is enough to give us an
idea ofthe
quality and character ofthe important buildings of
whose existence we know only from literary
sources. Brixworth
church dates from thelast
quarter oftheseventh century (Fig.ioo
and PL 76). It consists ofa nave offour bays, with arches turned
in Roman brick opening to what are believed to have been a
series of rectangular cells which may have been linked together
to form a kind of aisle, but was almost certainly conceived not
as one continuous passage but as separate compartments open/
ing off the nave. To the east there was a square unaisled pres/
bytery, originally separated from the nave by an arcade ofthree
arches, and it beyond again a narrower apsidal chancel. The
east wall ofthe presbytery is pierced by a single arch leading to
the chancel, flanked by two small windows, and at a later date
pierced also by two openings leading down to a passage round
a crypt beneath the apse. At the west there was a porch, flanked
by chambers to the north and south, though these were sub/
sequendy pulled down, as were the chapels flanking the nave.
The nave and presbytery
are some 30 feet wide in the clear and
even in its truncated state, with the arches ofthe nave walled up,
the interior remains, with the eighth/century sculptured friezes
at Breedon in Leicestershire, to show that the first heroic age of
English church art produced buildings ofa scale and quality