Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue439" data-source="post: 829963" data-attributes="member: 53455">Romanesque England: Saint Andrew in Little Snoring (2023)[Over the two weeks we spent in England at the beginning of May 2023 amid a whirlwind of feverish preparations for our daughter’s wedding, I managed to secure a few slots of free time to go and visit some of the very few churches still standing from what we would call in Continental Europe the Romanesque age, and which the English call “Norman”, as most of those churches were built around or after the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy in 1066. Anything that’s older, they call “Saxon” or “Anglo-Saxon”.]Little Snoring... The name itself is so appealing that I couldn’t resist! The church dedicated to Saint Andrew stands on a hilltop and is very notable for being one of only just two with a round tower fully detached from the church itself. Archæologists believe that, while the tower is from the 11th century, the church we see today replaced an earlier one built on the same site. I have found conclusive corroborative evidence of that during my visit. A lot of materials from the older church were also re-used to build the new one. The function of the tower was primarily to watch the environs, and its round shape was commanded by the difficulty of producing strong corners with the local pebbles and flint builders had to work with.Most of this very simple church is from the 1100s, while the large Gothic windows are from the 1200s and 1300s, the oldest being the triple window in the eastern wall (what we in Europe would call “the apse”).Judging by what I have seen (which is, I know, a very small and probably not very accurate sample), Romanesque churches in England are not at all like those in Continental Europe. Most of them have been disfigured by the opening of large windows, they don’t seem to have the so gracious semi-circular apses we so like, and their sole entrance is generally to the South —a consequence of the weather, I assume. They also have not been very nicely maintained, generally: here for example, industrial mechanical tiles have been used for the roofing. The quality of the Mediæval apparel is also oftentimes a lot more mediocre than in France, Italy or Spain.Both photos: Nikon Z7 II, Nikkor Z 14-30mm, ƒ/4 S lens. Handheld.[ATTACH=full]416132[/ATTACH]This is the conclusive corroborative evidence I was mentioning above: there is no justification for the wide, walled-in archway you see at the base of the tower. The small doorway within it is amply sufficient to grant access to the tower. So, if this large archway existed before, it is for a reason, which was to give access to the nave of the previous church and enable communication between that nave and the ground floor of the tower. You can also see very clearly the “footprint” of that nave’s roof lines above the archway. The older church was indeed smaller, and built along a different axis than the new one to the right of the frame. The apparel on that remnant gable wall also appears quite archaic, with traces of opus spicatum (fishbone apparel) reminiscent of Roman times. Possibly, that church was built before the tower, in which case that archway would have been its western portal...[ATTACH=full]416133[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

Verification