Piers are commonly formed from a square or parallelogram with the angles fluted, having on the flat face of each side a semicyclindrical shaft. The base mouldings are polygonal. The most common doorway is the Tudor arch having a square head over it. The doors are often richly ornamented. There are a large number of square-headed windows, and so proud were these builders of their new style of window that they frequently inserted Perpendicular windows in walls of a much earlier date. Hence it is not always safe to determine the age of a church by an examination of the windows alone. Panel-work tracery on the upper part of the interior walls is a distinctive feature of this style. [Illustration: VESTRY DOOR, ADDERBURY CHURCH, OXON] [Illustration: ST. ERASMUS' CHAPEL, WESTMINSTER ABBEY] The slope of the roof is much lower than before, and often the former high-pitched roofs were at this period replaced by the almost flat roofs prevalent in the fifteenth century. The parapets are often embattled. The rose, the badge of the houses of York and Lancaster, is often used as an ornamental detail, and also rows of the Tudor flower, composed of four petals, frequently occur. One of the most distinctive mouldings is the _cavetto_, a wide shallow hollow in the centre of a group of mouldings. Also we find a peculiar wave, and a kind of double ogee moulding which are characteristic of the style. [Illustration: WINDOW, CHRISTCHURCH, OXFORD] Spires of this period are not very common, and usually spring from within the parapet. The interiors of our churches were enriched at this time with much elaborate decoration. Richly carved woodwork in screens, rood-lofts, pulpits, and pews, sculptured sedilia and a noble reredos, and much exuberance of decorative imagery and panel-work, adorned our churches at this time, much of which was obliterated or destroyed by spoliators of the Reformation period, the iconoclastic Puritans of the seventeenth century, or the "restorers" of the nineteenth. However, we may be thankful that so much remains to the present day of the work of our great English church-builders, while we endeavour to trace the history of each church written in stone, and to appreciate these relics of antiquity which most of our villages possess. CHAPTER X NORMAN VILLAGES AND THE _DOMESDAY BOOK_ The coming of the Normans--_Domesday Book_--Its objects--Its contents-- Barkham in _Domesday_--Saxon families--Saxons who retained their estates--Despoiled landowners--Village officers and artisans-- Villeins--_Bordarii_--_Cottarii_--_Servi_--Socmen--Presbyter--Names of Normans--The teaching of _Domesday_.