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444
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
left, a detached building to the east of the enlarged church. A
rather similar process seems to have gone on at Glastonbury,
where again a very early monastic establishment consisted of a
number ofsmall churches laid out axially, which were eventu/
ally linked to form a continuous series of buildings, and lastly,
though much later than St. Augustine's, superseded by a great
unified scheme. At Glastonbury the legendary sanctity of the
early wooden church at the west ofthe group was so great as to
prevent its ever being absorbed completely in any reorganiza^
tion ofthe building, and even after the complete
reconstruction
in the late twelfth it century retained its
separate identity. These
examples, where excavation has shown the actual process of
change from the early system ofa group ofsmall churches to the
single unified building ofimpressive scale, are perhaps the most
telling, but the evidence of Sherborne shows that the tenth
century could on occasion produce new buildings of impres^
sive size, for the width ofthe central vessel ofthe nave at Sher^
borne, as built at the end ofthe tenth century, seems to have been
the same as that of its Gothic successor which still exists, and
the crossing space beneath the central lantern tower was prob^
ably actually reduced in size in the modifications made by
Bishop Roger of Sarum in the 1120*5. At Winchester, too, the
evidence of the size of the great organ, which is recorded as
needing seventy men to blow it, implies a building
of conx
siderable proportions.
All this evidence from pre/Conquest England only shows
that the desire for the single great church of impressive scale was
not a new importation from Normandy in the late eleventh
century, but unquestionably it was greatly promoted by the
wholesale importation of churchmen from the Continent
which then took place. The desire was common to all Europe,
and it was greater resources, both wealth and technical re^
sources, and perhaps a sense of quickened missionary zeal on
the
part of the new/comers, which gave to the new outburst of
building in England its specially monumental character.
The dimension in which the new churches took on their
great increase in size was more particularly length. The new