Produced by Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's note Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. An obvious printer error has been corrected, and it is listed at the end. All other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature THE GROUND PLAN OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, MANAGER EDINBURGH: 100, PRINCES STREET BERLIN: A. ASHER AND CO. LEIPZIG: F. A. BROCKHAUS NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: Hedon, Yorkshire: nave from N.W.] [Illustration] THE GROUND PLAN OF THE ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON M.A., F.S.A. Cambridge: at the University Press 1911 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_. PREFACE There is as yet no book entirely devoted to the development of the plan of the parish church in England, and the body of literature which bears upon the subject is not very accessible to the ordinary student. The present volume is an attempt to indicate the main lines on which that development proceeded. It is obvious that, from necessary considerations of space, much has been omitted. The elevation of the building, and the treatment of its decorative features, window-tracery, sculpture, etc., belong to another and wider branch of architectural study, in which the parish church pursues the same line of structural development as the cathedral or monastic church, and the architectural forms of the timber-roofed building follow the example set by the larger churches with their roofs of stone. To this side of the question much attention has been devoted, and of late years increasing emphasis has been laid on the importance of the vaulted construction of our greater churches, which is the very foundation of medieval architecture and the secret of its progress through its various "styles." It is expected that the reader of this book, in which a less familiar but none the less important topic is handled, will already have some acquaintance with the general progress of medieval architectural forms, with which the development of the ground plan keeps pace. Some historical and architectural questions, which arise out of the consideration of the ground plan, and have an important bearing upon it, are treated in another volume of this series, which is intended to be complementary to the present one.