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ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE 445
Anglo-Norman churches were longer, both east ofthe crossing
and especially west ofit in their naves, not only than their Saxon
predecessors but than most of the contemporary churches on
the Continent, and the greater English churches retained this
characteristic throughout the Gothic period. No really
satis/
factory explanation ofthis has ever been put forward, and it was
as marked at Lincoln, Ely, and Peterborough, where the west
end is elaborated in a manner that derives from the practice of
late Carolingian times, as it is in the churches which finished
simply in a gabled front or two western towers in the later
French fashion, so that the additional bays added to the English
churches can hardly have been a substitute for these western
elaborations. The first example that we know ofwas the Confessor's
church at Westminster, which seems to have had a nave
oftwelve bays arranged in pairs after the manner ofthe existing
cathedral at Durham, deriving probably from Jumieges in
Normandy, where, however, there are only eight bays.
The existing buildings of this period, including the great
crypts, show two main types of plan. All of them, with the
exception of Old Sarum, were cross plans with a central
lantern tower at the intersection of the limbs of the cross, the
difference between the types being in the treatment ofthe eastern
limb. This was ended either in a series of apses corresponding to
the main vessel and the two aisles, or by returning the aisle round
the curved end of the central vessel and providing chapels set
radially as at Gloucester or tangentially
to the curve as at Nor/
wich. There were generally apsidal chapels projecting
from the
eastern side ofthe transept, and at St. Albans, and its daughter
house at Binham in Norfolk, there are two of these to each
transept, the inner ones next to the aisles having greater projec/
tion than those to north and south of them, the whole eastern
part of the church forming a group of seven apsidal/ended
spaces set en ecMon. At St. Albans, the early Lincoln, Old
Sarum, and elsewhere the aisles were separated from the main
vessel by solid walls. These two systems were both to be found
in Normandy in the mid'eleventh century, the three^apsed one
being the more common, though such influential buildings in