The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland from the earliest Christian times to the seventeenth century; vol. 1/3MacGibbon, David
History
The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland from the earliest Christian times to the seventeenth century; vol. 1/3
MacGibbon, David
Church architecture -- Scotland
The tower is pierced with an archway in each of its east and west walls.
The lower part of the west wall of the tower projects about 2 feet 2
inches on each side beyond the side walls, with a breadth of about 2
feet 5 inches, and finishes upwards in a roughly-tapering form at the
level of the top of the western arch. (See Fig. 154.) These projecting
portions of wall have somewhat the appearance of side buttresses to the
tower, but they are more like the remains of the east wall of a nave,
which now no longer exists. They have not the character of
originally-built early buttresses, but have rather that of the remains
of projecting walls, dressed up at a later period. Besides, it is a
characteristic of the structure that it has no buttresses flanking the
other arches. There is observable on the west face of the tower the mark
of a roof. This mark, if produced on each side to about the level of the
top of the chancel walls, would indicate the roof of a nave about ten or
twelve feet wider than the tower. There seems to be no other way of
explaining the mark of the roof and the projecting portions of the side
walls except by supposing that there was at one time a nave to the west
of the tower. This would also give a reason for the existence of the
[Illustration: FIG. 156.--St. Regulus’. Details of East Arch.]
east and west arches in the tower, which otherwise are somewhat
unintelligible.
The arch opening from the chancel to the tower is 9 feet 10 inches wide
by 27 feet high, and is of a plainer description than the apse archway.
[Illustration: FIG. 157.--St. Regulus’. Arch Moulding of West Arch of
Tower.]
The jambs have a square recess or nook on each face of the wall with a
shaft in each recess; and the arch above is quite plain, with square
edges. The western arch, from the tower into the supposed nave, is shown
in Fig. 154. It is 10 feet 4 inches wide by 28 feet high. Both of the
archways in the tower are now built up. The moulding of the west arch,
as far as visible, is shown in Fig. 157. The capitals of all the shafts
are rather shapeless and clumsy, but the necking and arch mouldings are
of good design. The arches are all slightly of the horse-shoe form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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