Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
History
Historic buildings : $b as seen and described by great writers
Architecture -- History; Art -- Study and teaching; Historic buildings
Entering the church by the gateway below the tower, we get the first
glimpse of the new world as it were that opens upon us, or rather we
should say the old world of seven hundred years ago that has passed
away. Everything is solemn, grand, and apparently eternal. Those
immense pillars that we look upon have lost nothing as yet of their
original strength; there is no token that they will ever lose it.
Within the porch are the remains of a very elegant pointed arch in
the right wall, leading we presume into the cloisters, but of an
older date than those glorious Norman pillars to which some, of as
peculiarly slender make, belonging to another and opposite arch, appear
to have been attached, somewhat we think to the injury of their simple
character. One of the most interesting features of the choir is the
long-continued aisle, or series of aisles, which entirely encircle it,
opening into the former by the spaces between the flat and circular
arch-piers of the body of the structure. It is about twelve feet wide,
with a pure arched and vaulted ceiling in the simplest and truest
Norman style, with windows of different sizes slightly pointed. The
pillars against the wall opposite the entrance into the choir are flat.
One of the most beautiful little architectural effects of a simple
kind that we can conceive is to be found at the north-eastern corner
of the aisle. Between two of the grand Norman pillars projecting from
the wall is a low postern doorway; and above, rising on each side from
the capitals, a peculiarly elegant arch, something like an elongated
horse-shoe. The connexion between two styles so strikingly different in
most respects as the Moorish, with its fantastic delicacy and variety
and richness, and the Norman with its simple (occasionally uncouth)
grandeur, was never more apparent. That little picture is alone worth a
visit to St. Bartholomew’s.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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