Of the second and rather larger type there are fewer examples still
remaining, and of these perhaps the best is the church of Aguas Santas
some seven miles north-east of Oporto. Originally the church consisted
of a nave with rectangular chancel and a north aisle with an eastern
apse roofed with a semi-dome. Later a tower with battlemented top and
low square spire was built at the west end of the aisle, and some thirty
years ago another aisle was added on the south side. As in most of the
smaller churches the chancel is lower than the nave, leaving room above
its roof for a large round window, now filled up except for a small
traceried circle in the centre. The most highly decorated part is the
chancel, which like all the rest of the church has a good corbel table,
and about two-thirds of the way up a string course richly covered with
billet moulding. Interrupting this on the south side are two
round-headed windows, still small but much larger than the slits found
in the older churches. In each case, in a round-headed opening there
stand two small shafts with bases and elaborately carved capitals but
without any abaci, supporting a large roll moulding, and these are all
repeated inside at the inner face of a deep splay. In one of these
windows not only are the capitals covered with intertwined ribbon-work,
but each shaft is covered with interknotted circles enclosing flowers,
and there is a band of interlacing work round the head of the actual
window opening. Inside the church has been more altered. Formerly the
aisle was separated from the nave by two arches, but when the south
aisle was built the central pier was taken out and the two arches thrown
into one large and elliptical arch, but the capitals of the chancel
arch and the few others that remain are all well wrought and well
designed. The west door is a good simple example of the first pointed
period, with plain moulded arches and shafts which bear simple
French-looking capitals. Other churches of the same class are those of
São Christovão do Rio Mau not far from Villo do Conde, and São Pedro de
Rates, a little further up the Ave at the birthplace of the first bishop
of Braga and earliest martyr of Portugal. São Pedro is a little later,
as the aisle arches are all pointed, and is a small basilica of nave and
aisles with short transepts, chancel and eastern chapels.
[Sidenote: Villar de Frades.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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