me much of Sedgemoor; there is the same wide expanse intersected by rhines, but with this important difference, that in Marshland the expanse is simply boundless; no mountain-ranges fence in its horizon; no Brent Knoll or Glastonbury Tor diversifies its dreariness. Here is undoubtedly the grandest group of village churches I know of, the work of a most abiding spirit of taste and munificence, no age or style being unrepresented. The stately Norman pile of Walsoken is succeeded by the elaborate Lancet work of West Walton; a few miles further lead us to the vast Decorated pile of Walpole St. Peters, its gorgeous porch and illimitable clerestory; finally, in Terrington St. Clements, we reach a still more gigantic Perpendicular building, with a west front rivalling Yatton and Crewkerne, and a whole nave which would not disgrace a small cathedral. In these magnificent fabrics the Perpendicular is not the exclusive or predominant style, and, where it does occur, its peculiarities are not so strongly marked as in the district farther east. Again, though buildings of nearly equal splendour occur here and there in other parts of Norfolk, they do not seem to lie nearly so thick upon the ground. As in many parts of Somerset, we find an occasional splendid building, with several insignificant ones between each; the average of the churches in North Northamptonshire would probably be higher than in either Norfolk or Somerset; though no Northamptonshire church, hardly Rothwell or Warmington or Fotheringhay, could be set against the finest examples in those two counties.

GENERAL OUTLINES.

The first thing that strikes the observer in comparing the larger parish churches of Somerset and of East-Anglia,

I have re

is the greater average size of the latter. marked in former papers that many of the finest Somersetshire churches, Wrington for instance, have their naves too short for their height, cramped as they often were between the tower at one end and the chancel at the other. Very fine churches have naves of only four or five bays; Crewkerne, with its broad arches, has only three. Putting aside St. Mary Redcliffe, the largest I know are Martock, North Petherton, Bridgwater, and Weston Zoyland.* In East-Anglia many churches far exceed these in length; naves of six and seven bays are the usual thing in buildings of any pretensions, and they sometimes extend to eight, nine, and even ten. Again, according to a custom on which I shall presently enlarge, there are generally two clerestory windows over each bay, so that ranges are produced of from twelve to twenty windows, to which Somersetshire can afford no parallel. Crewkerne is the only Somersetshire church I remember with two windows over each arch, and that can only muster six! The vast length of these naves has this special advantage, that two or three of the western bays are often left quite free from seats, to the great improvement of the general effect, and also to the much better display of the magnificent fonts for which the district is renowned, and which thus become subordinate central points at the west end.

The fully developed cross form, with the central tower, of which Somersetshire affords such noble examples, seems to be rare in Norfolk, except of course in the case of great minsters, like Norwich, Wymondham, and Lynn. By Lynn I of course mean the vast fabric of St. Marga

Dunster occurs as a Somersetshire church of still greater size, but its monastic destination and irregular plan exclude it from the comparison.

rets; but there is another large cross church, St. James, with a central octagon, now half destroyed, half desecrated,* which must surely have been monastic also. Snettisham is, I believe, cruciform, and East Dereham has the striking combination of a central lantern and a detached campanile. This church, owing to its original central tower having been taken down, and rebuilt immediately to the west of its old position, presents the singular phænomenon of a double transept.† Terrington may have been meant to exhibit the same type as Dereham; at present it has only a detached tower; but of this church more anon. transepts, or rather transeptal chapels, sometimes occur, as in St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, where they are mere projections from a single bay of the aisle, with the clerestory carried uninterruptedly over them. Swaffham has transepts nearly the full height, but the tower is western.

Small

The central tower without transepts occasionally occurs, as in the Norman church at Castle Rising, and in two much more remarkable instances in Lynn and Norwich. The building called St. Andrew's Hall, in the latter city, is in fact the nave of a large church of Friars, the choir of which nominally forms a Dutch church, but it is regularly used as the workhouse chapel. Between the nave and the choir is a single bay belonging to neither, which is said to have supported a hexagonal tower, which fell early in the last century. Now at Lynn there remains a very remarkable fragment, which, together with what we have just seen at Norwich, enables us to re-construct an entire church of this type. At Norwich we have the church without the steeple; at Lynn we have the steeple without the church.

* Since then, I see by the newspapers that the whole building has fallen down.

See Archæological Proceedings at Norwich, p. 182.